


THE UNIVERSITY _. . 


OF ILLINOIS 
LIBRARY 


eee = af 


Presented in 1916 
by 


President Edmund J. James 


in memory of 
Amanda K. Casad 


OWA) 
MI@F _ . 
cop 4= 








. me 


Return this book on or before the 
Latest Date stamped below. A 
charge is made on all overdue 


books. 


University of Illinois Library 

















Aly apes 


ae Abie tee 





Fite 


rose oe 


what 


ee 


ae 


— 


ene - 


nN 








» 








Reminiscences of Chicago 
During the Great Fire 








f FIRRARY 


ms 


| 





~ 
» 
' 
‘ 





NiM 








4 
‘. 





Q 
LY 





ITY OF 





‘o 
Che Lakeside Classics Le 


SC 
S 


Reminiscences 
of Chicago During the*]] 
Great Fire 7 


WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
BY 


MABEL McILVAINE 


Che Lakeside Press, Chicaga 
R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS COMPANY 
CHRISTMAS, MCMXV 








& RW 


Bo Te 24 


OTL 
M\Sn * 


Cop 4 ’ 
\ 


. 


publishers’ preface 


HIS volume of the Lakeside Classics will 

complete the series of Reminiscences of 

the bygone days of Chicago. These remi- 
niscences began with Chicago as a frontier 
trading-post, as described in the Autobiography 
of our distinguished citizen, Gurdon S. Hub- 
bard; and the Great Fire of 1871 seems to be 
the event that may naturally be considered as 
the last of Chicago’s earlier days. 

Shortly before the fire The Lakeside Press 
had its beginning, and, with many other busi- 
ness enterprises of the city, it lost everything 
in the fire but the good name and indomitable 
courage of its owner. The founder of the 
Press was Richard Robert Donnelley, who in 
the Fall of 1864 had come from Hamilton, 
Canada, to act as the ‘‘practical’’ partner in 
the publishing and printing concern of Church, 
Goodman and Donnelley. In 1870 the plant 
and the good will of the printing department 
were sold to the newly organized Lakeside 
Publishing and Printing Company, of which 
Mr. Donnelley was elected President and Gen- 
eralManager. Theoriginal Lakeside Building, 
at the southwest corner of Clark and Adams 
streets, was to be both in architecture and 
appointments the finest printing-office in the 

Vv 


ae, a 650 


Publishers’ Preface 


country; the new building was just under roof 
when it and the printing-office, still at the old 
location of Church, Goodman and Donnelley, 
were swept away by the fire, and without assets 
or insurance the building and business had to 
be started anew. 

The Press occupied this building until 1880, 
when it removed to more commodious quarters 
in the Taylor Building, on Monroe Street, 
where the Harris Trust and Savings Bank 
Building now stands. In 1897 the business 
was moved to the present Lakeside Press Build- 
ing, on Plymouth Court, corner of Polk Street. 
Although in 1901 this building was doubled in 
size, the constant demand of an increasing 
business has necessitated the beginning of the 
development of.a new plant at the lake and 
Twenty-first Street, where there will be ade- 
quate room and light, it is hoped, for many 
years to come. 

And even with the building of this new plant 
there is a touch of the romance of the passing 
of old Chicago. For many years this block, 
lying on the east side of Calumet Avenue, be- 
tween Twenty-first and Twenty-second streets, 
and running back to the Illinois Central tracks, 
was the site of several of the choicest resi- 
dences of Chicago’s early aristocracy. The 
most stringent building line kept all the houses 
far back from the street, and the stables in the 
rear were sunk to provide an uninterrupted 
view of the lake. Among those who had their 

vi 


Publishers’ Preface 


homes in this block were: General Palmer, 
General John A. Logan, Alexander J. Leith 
(now the Earl of Fife), Arthur B. Meeker, 
Henry Durand, John A. Markley, John Alling, 
Dr. Moses T. Gunn, John A. Hamlin, John 
H. Wrenn, William Kelley, and John R. Walsh. 
Several of these houses of the sixties and sev- 
enties have already been razed to make room 
for that part of the new plant recently finished, 
and the balance will disappear as developments 
of the business demand additional space. 

Many of the following articles have appeared 
in whole or in part in Andraes’s History of 
Chicago. The hunting up of the original 
sources and the discovering of additional ma- 
terial has been the work of the Editor, Miss 
Mabel McIlvaine, to whom the thanks of the 
Publishers are due. 

This series still continues to be the work of 
the apprentices of the Press. During the past 
year a most important event happened in the 
history of the apprentice school: in August 
occurred its first commencement, at which 
were graduated as journeymen twenty-seven 
young men who had been taught their trade in 
the school and factory,—an achievement unique 
in the history of American presses. 

This little volume again carries the annual 
message of Christmas good will to the friends 
and patrons of 

THE PUBLISHERS. 


CHRISTMAS, IQI5. 





Contents 


INTRODUCTION . 


JosEpH EpGAR CHAMBERLIN 


Reprinted by permission from “Chicago 
and the Great Conflagration,’’ issued 
soon after the fire by Elias Colbert and 
Everett Chamberlin. 


ALEXANDER FREAR 


Reprinted from the Vew York World of 
October 15, 1871. 


Mrs. ALFRED HEBARD . 


From a manuscript in the possession of 
The Chicago Historical Society. 


H. W. S. CLEVELAND cies 
From a manuscript dated Nerenihes 10, 


1871, and now in the possession of The 
Chicago Historical Society. 


Horace WHITE 
Letter to Murat Halstead, “Editor Wy The 
Cincinnati Oia Published i in that 
newspaper, October, 1861. 


WILLIAM Bross 
Dictated to a reporter of Ve he Nive York 
Tribune by Mr. Bross upon his arrival 
from Chicago at the St. Nicholas Hotel, 
New York, and printed in 7'4e New York 
Tribune of October 14, 1871. 


ix 


PAGE 
Xili 


14 


37 


44 


60 


78 


Contents 





LAMBERT TREE . 


Transcript of a manuscript in the posses- 
sion of The Chicago Historical Society. 


ARTHUR M. KINZIE 


From a manuscript in the possession of 
The Chicago Historical Society. 


Mary L. FALEs 


From a letter written by Mrs. David Fales 
to her mother, dated October 10, 1871. 


WILLIAM CROFFUT . 
From the Lakeside Monthly, Triad iaya, 


Cuicaco Directory For OcToBER 10, 
1871", : 
From Zhe Chicago PAA ae: Thies: 
day, October 10, 1871. 


92 


120 


126 


139 


introduction — 








Fnutroduction 


THE GREAT CALAMITY OF THE AGE! 
CHICAGO IN ASHES! 


The South, the North, and a Portion of the West 
Divisions of the City in Ruins. 


All the Hotels, Banks, Public Buildings, News- 
paper Offices, and Great Business 
Blocks Swept Away. 


THE CONFLAGRATION STILL IN PROGRESS 


if HICAGO is burning! Up to this hour 
(c; of writing (1 0’clock p. m.) the best part 
of the city is already in ashes. .. . 
The entire South Division, from Harrison 
Street north to the river, almost the entire 
North Division, from the river'to Lincoln Park, 
and several blocks in the West Division are 
burned.”’ 

So read the opening lines of Zhe Evening 
Journal-Extra, Chicago, Monday, October 
9g, 1871—the only downtown paper issued in 
Chicago on that date. 

In the volume which follows, there have 
been gathered the personal experiences of 
some who passed through the Chicago Fire, 


xiii 


‘Jntroduction 


which still remains the greatest known to his- 
tory; and in this Introduction an effort has 
been made to describe the general course of 
the fire, as to what it consumed, and when 
and how, with perhaps a hint here and there 
as to why. To follow a fire burning on three 
sides of the river at once taxes the agility of 
even the most enthusiastic ‘‘fire fan.’’ Hence 
a map has been prepared, based on historical 
data; and if the reader will refer to this map 
in reading, it will, we trust, make plain what 
would otherwise appear complex. 

‘‘The fire broke out,’’ says the /ournal- 
Extra, ‘fon the corner of De Koven and 
Twelfth [rather Jefferson] streets, at about 
nine o’clock on Sunday evening, being caused 
by a cow kicking over a lamp in a stable in 
which a woman was milking. An alarm was 
immediately given, but, owing to the high 
southwest wind, the building was speedily con- 
sumed, and thence the fire spread rapidly. 
The firemen could not, with all their efforts, 
get the mastery of the flames.’’ 

This was, be it observed, the very first 
appearance of Ze Cow. How largely she has 
figured in the pages of history since then is 
known to all the world. The reader’s atten- 
tion is called to the fact that in this account 
the cow did the kicking in the presence of the 
lady, but that the latter’s name had not yet 
been dragged into the affair. 

After the lapse of nine days, in Zhe Chicago 


X1V 


Jntroduction 





Times of October 18, we read: ‘‘Flames 
were discovered in a small stable in the rear of 
a house on the corner of De Koven and Jeffer- 
son streets. Living at the place indicated was 
an old Irish woman. . . . On the morning of 
the fire she was found by a reporter for Zhe 
Times sitting on the front steps of her own 
house. . . . - At first she refused to speak one 
word about the fire, but only screamed at the 
top of her voice, ‘ My poor cow, my poor cow! 
She is gone and I have nothing left in the 
world.’ Finally she was induced to talk, and 
this is what she said: It had been her regular 
nightly habit to visit the stable and see if her 
cow was all right. On Sunday night, about 
9% [sic] o’clock, she took a lamp in her hands 
and went out to have a look ather pet. Then 
she took a notion the cow must have some 
salt, and she set down the lamp and went in 
the house forsome. Ina moment the cow had 
accidentally kicked over the lamp, an explo- 
sion followed, and in an instant the structure 
was enveloped in flames.’’ 

The woman who lived at the place indicated 
was Mrs. Patrick O’Leary, 137 De Koven 
Street, about three doors from Jefferson 
Street. 

The points to be noted in this on verbatim 
interview are, that the lady was not herself 
present at the moment of the kicking, and 
that in any case the cow did it acctdentally! 

Further light is shed upon the subject by a 


XV 


‘Jntroduction 


document which has recently been deposited 
at the Chicago Historical Society by Mr. S. 
H. Kimball,! of Oak Park, Illinois, from which 
we are permitted to quote: 

‘*T saw’ the’ start of the® fires fronieiie 
roof of our house. . . . Tuesday morning Mr. 
Clarence Merriam, a young man with a remark- 
able talent for drawing, called at our house 
and asked my brother Arthur and myself to 
go with him to the location where the fire 
started, as he wanted to make some sketches. 
We reached the O’Leary house, and immedi- 
ately proceeded to what was left of the shed 
where the fire started. AsI recall the matter, 
the south wall of the shed was still standing, 
but the balance of the shed had been nearly 
destroyed by fire. My friend commenced to 
make a drawing, and I began looking for some 
memento, as I was at that time a relic col- 
lector: . ts 

‘“We had hardly been there but a few 
moments when Mrs. O’Leary came out with 
a broomstick in her hand and drove us 
away. . ... The three of us immediately went 
to a spot to the east and south of the house, 
where my friend started to make a sketch of 
the house. . . . I slipped back again to the 
shed. . . . As I was looking about, I noticed 


1 At the time of the Fire Mr. Kimball, then a boy, 
was living near the corner of Washington and Lin- 
coln streets on the West Side. His father was an 
Alderman. His present address is 454 No. Grove 
Ave., Oak Park. : 

Xvi 


Jutroduction 


that one of the planks in the floor of the shed 
had been broken, forming a V-shaped space. 
This space was filled with burnt hay, and a 
glitter and sparkle caught my eye. Leaning 
down I picked up the bottom of a small glass 
lamp. 

‘*T slipped this into my pocket with the 
excited feeling that I had in my possession 
the bottom of the lamp which set Chicago on 
fire. I ran to my brother and friend and told 
them to follow me as fast as they could... . 
~ During the following months I gathered a fine 
bunch of Chicago Fire relics, which I put in a 
large cabinet. . . . Finally we hired an Irish 
cook. One day I was showing her these 
relics, and when I showed her the piece of 
lamp she was very much excited and told me 
that she could tell me how the Chicago Fire 
started, but that I must say nothing about it. 

‘*It seems she lived in the vicinity of the 
O’Leary house, and knew the O’Leary’s. 
She also had a family of friends living near 
the O’Leary’s. She made the statement to 
me that a lot of young people were having a 
dance the evening the Fire started. They 
wanted to make-a little punch but were out of 
milk, and someone suggested that they go over 
and milk Mrs. O’Leary’s cow. They picked 
up a glass lamp which was in this house, and 
went to the shed, and, while attempting to 
milk the cow, the lamp was kicked over, and 
they fled. 


XVii 


‘Jntroduction 





‘‘T showed her the piece of lamp, and she 
said she was very positive that it was the style 
of lamp that they had in their house. She 
seemed greatly excited about the matter and 
got my promise that I would say nothing 
about it for fear these people should get into 
trouble. A very short time after that she left 
the house without giving any warning, and we 
were never able to locate her. Soon after she 
left I found that this piece of lamp had dis- 
appeared.”’ 

The cow, the lamp, and the bowl of punch 
have been made much of in Chicago for reasons 
of our own. The fact that we had fifty-six 
miles of wooden-block pavement, and six 
hundred and fifty-one miles of wooden sidewalks 
might have seemed too much like ‘‘ prepared- 
ness.’’ And the other facts of our having but 
one pumping-station in the whole city, and that 
roofed with wood, together with our fourteen 
fire-engines among some three hundred 
thousand inhabitants—these things are too 
inconvenient to discuss. Then, too, our cus- 
tom of allowing landlords to erect wooden 
cottages in the immediate vicinity of gas works, 
and at the approaches to bridges and tunnels — 
well, we knew better, but we did not like to 
appear militant. 

Setting aside the cow,—the immediate and © 
exciting cause of the fire—it should be stated 
that all through the summer and fall of 1871 
an unusual degree of heat had prevailed, and 

XVi11 


FJntroduction 


a rainfall so light as to give scientists cause 
for much speculation. Forest fires of extraor- 
dinary extent had ravaged the Northwest, de- 
stroying vegetation and whole communities, 
especially around the southern border of the 
Great Lakes. High southwest winds had been 
blowing for weeks, parching the prairies 
around Chicago and every piece of timber 
within and without her limits. During the 
first week of October there had been a contin- 


- ual succession of small fires in the city, quickly 


and efficiently dealt with by the Fire Depart- 
ment. 

On Saturday October 7th an unaccountable 
blaze had appeared in the basement of Lull 
and Holmes’ planing mill on South Canal 
.Street, quickly communicated to a paper-box 
factory, lumber-yards, and the ever-present 
pine cottages. This had burned over four 
blocks bounded by Van Buren and Adams, 
Clinton Street and the south branch of the 
Chicago River. Again the wind was high, and 
only by extraordinary exertions did the firemen 
extinguish the fire in time to save the West 
Side from what was reported in the morning 
papers as ‘‘ The Great Conflagration.’’ Some 
of the firemen present at this, the ‘‘ Saturday 
night fire,’’ had been on duty seventy-two 
hours without relief. 

Sunday night, the eighth of October, after 
a very sultry day, the inhabitants of the city 
were many of them returning to their homes 

X1X 





‘Jutroduction 


from church when again the dreaded alarm of 
fire was turnedin. After leaving the O’ Leary 
barn, the fire traversed about nine blocks 
north, tending in an easterly direction, as it 
_ was propelled by the southwest gale, until it 
came to the edge of the river and the scene of 
the Saturday night fire. Mr. Robert Read, a 
young man in the employ of George C. Clark & 
Co., insurance agents, was on the spot at this 
juncture, and wrote: ‘‘I went towards Van 
Buren Street, thinking that when the fire 
reached the ruins of Saturday night there would 
be a chance of getting the best of it, and it 
seemed so; but when I reached Adams Street 
and had crossed to the east end of the 
bridge, . . . a large board all aflame came 
flying over and dropped directly behind the Gas 
Works on their buildings. | In an instant every- 
thing was ablaze, and I feel certain that this 
is the location of the starting of the fire on the 
South Side. ’’ 

Other accounts agree substantially with this, 
although some say that the first blaze appeared 
in the rear of the old Armory, which was 
separated from the Gas Works’ outbuildings by 
only the width of the street. The explosion of 
the immense gasometer, which followed after a 
short interval, left the South Side in darkness, 
save for the glare of the fire. The time of 
the crossing of the fire to the South Side was 
about midnight. 

‘At this time the neighborhood known as 

XX 





FJntroduction 





‘Conley’s Patch,’”’ reads The Chicago Tribune 
of October 11, 1871,— ‘‘the most squalid, 
poverty-stricken, crime-stained portion of 
Chicago—contained but few people awake or 
close at hand, the greater part being absent at 
the scene of the fire across the river, while the 
women and children were in bed and asleep. 
A cry of horror and alarm was at once raised, 
but not soon enough, it is almost certain, to 
enable the sleeping inhabitants to save them- 
selves. . . . Within sixty seconds the space 
of one block had been traversed, and the south 
line of Monroe Street was reached for nearly 
the entire distance between Wells and 
Market. . . . Northward and eastward the 
flames progressed, crossing Madison Street, 
and extending east to La Salle Street at the 
same time. Stone, brick, and wooden struc- 
tures fell alike, and with almost the same 
degree of rapidity.’’ 

La Salle Street at this time contained some 
of the best business architecture in the city— 
buildings with marble fronts, mansard roofs, 
and much adornment. Among them might be 
mentioned the Marine Bank, the new Nixon 
Building, the Otis Block, the Chamber of 
Commerce, Metropolitan Block, and of course 
the Court-house, with its central tower and 
rather ungainly ‘‘wings.”’ 

Mr. Read, from whom we quoted the account 
of the crossing of the fire to the South Side, 
says further: ‘‘I went to our office under the 

XX1 


Jntroduction 


Chamber of Commerce, and was there but a 
very short time, and when I reached the side- 
walk on the corner of Washington and La Salle, 
the flames were coming with a roar. It did 
not seem to me that it was more than fifteen 
minutes from the time I left Adams Street 
bridge. “The cupola of the City Hall had now 
caught fire, although the flames went around 
through the rear of the Chamber of Commerce 
and took Brunswick Hall first.’’ 

The Court-house itself did not actually burn 
until about two o’clock. Meanwhile its great 
bell was heard above the crash and roar clang- 
ing out the alarm of fire. Operated by a 
mechanical contrivance, it continued to toll 
long after every living soul had left, and 
. people who passed through the fire say that 
the effect of this constant clangor was 
indescribably grewsome. Finally with one last 
wild clang, it fell, speedily followed by the 
tower itself. 

While the Court-house was still burning, 
at about half-past one o’clock that night, an- 
other flying brand, borne on the wings of the 
hurricane, alighted far up on the North Side at 
the very edge of Lake Michigan upon a little 
frame building which belonged to Lill’s 
Brewery—one of the stately avenue of 
breweries which was then allowed to adorn the 
Lake Shore. In an instant the brewery itself 
was ablaze, and the Chicago Water Works, 
which stood across the street, had caught. 

XX11 


Jntroduction 


By three thirty o’clock Chicago’s water supply 
had ceased. 

Having cut off both light and water, and 
destroyed the citadel, the fire proceeded to 
devour at its leisure the heart of Chicago’s 
business district—the center of trade for the 
whole Northwest. 

In a general way the course of the fire lay 
from the southwest to the northeast; but by 
' throwing out these flying brands in advance 
of the main body, and by an ability which it 
developed for ‘‘eating into the wind,’’ it 
managed to spread also straight east and south. 
In this way it reached Harrison Street, on the 
east wing, and Polk and Taylor streets on the 
west wing of the southern line of attack. 
Gunpowder was used to check its further 
advance to the south, under the direction of 
General Phil Sheridan. The blowing up of 
buildings adjacent to the Wabash Avenue 
Methodist Church at Harrison and Wabash, 
together with the heroism of a Mr. William 
Haskell, who descended into the interior of the 
church from the steeple, caused the fire to 
deflect to the north at this point for a block. 
The last block to burn on the Lake Front was 
Terrace Row, between Van Buren and Con- 
gress, where the Auditorium now stands. 

North of this Harrison Street line some of 
the prominent buildings to burn were the 
Michigan Southern Depot, the Grand Pacific 
Hotel, just completed and filling an entire 

XX 


Jntroduction 


square, the Palmer House, then at State and 
Quincy streets, the Matteson House, Trinity 
Church, the Lakeside Publishing Company’s 
new building at Clark and Adams, Farwell 
Hall on Madison, between La Salle and Clark, 
‘the Post-office, Zimes and Tribune buildings 
on Dearborn, with the Reynolds and Shepard 
and Portland blocks nearby, McVicker’s 
Theatre on Madison, Crosby’s Opera House 
on Washington, the St. James Hotel, First 
National Bank, and Field, Leiter & Co. buildings 
at State and Washington, with Booksellers’ 
Row, corner of Madison and State, and the 
Drake-Farwell block a square away on Wabash 
(occupied by J. V. Farwell, Lyon & Healy, 
and others), the Sherman House on Randolph, 
and the Tremont on Lake, with all the splendid 
drygoods houses on the latter street, and all 
the great wholesale houses grouped around the 
approaches to the river. 

When the fire had finished with the South 
Side, the only buildings left standing in its 
course were Lind’s Block at the northwest 
corner of Randolph and Market streets and the 
unfinished fireproof Nixon Building at the 
northeast corner of La Salle and Monroe. 

The 7ribune Building, long considered ‘‘ab- 
solutely fireproof,’’ had held out until about 
nine o’clock on Monday morning. 

The crossing of the main body of the fire to 
the North Side seems to have occurred at State 
Street bridge, and the time affixed to it by Mr. 

XX1V 


Jntroduction 


Wright, whose livery stable burned at the north 
end of the bridge, was about half-past_two 
on Monday morning. A oi eoes at Rush 
Street, notwithstanding the bridgeébeing turned, 


also occurred, the time being giv the Times 
and ays accounts as abo OF ALaM: 
Between State and Rush on the northside of the 


river, was the Galena Elevator. Osthe tracks 
of the Northwestern Railroad, at Kinme*Street, 
were cars containing a quantity of oil, Just 
east of Rush Street bridge, on the ‘Site of 
the first dwelling house in Chicago, wasthe 
McCormick reaper factory, containing 2,000 
new reapers ready for shipment. Beyond,\lay 
lumber-yards, warehouses, etc.—largely of 
inflammable material. 

All of these began to burn readily, and the 
fire, with tremendous headway, set off up 
Rush, Cass, and State streets. Here it found 
the best residence portion of the city—such 
homes as that of William B. Ogden, Chicago’s 
first Mayor, Isaac N. Arnold, Walter L. New- 
berry, H. H. Magie, George and Julian Rum- 
sey, etc.—nearly all occupying a square each, 
and surrounded with stately gardens. 

At 6 a. m. on Monday the line of fire on 
the North Side extended from the river at 
Wells Street to the Water Works, with a little 
northern loop extending to Cedar Street. By 
7:30 A. M. it extended from Franklin and the 
river to Division and the lake. In the course 
of this diagonal progress across the lower 

XXV 


‘J'ntroduction 


North Side, one of its most disastrous deeds 
was the burning of The Chicago Historical 
Society’s building, at Dearborn Avenue and 
Ontario Street. Here was housed, among 
other priceless collections, the first draft of 
the Emancipation Proclamation, given to the 
Northwestern Sanitary Fair by Abraham Lin- 
coln, purchased for the Soldiers’ Home, and 
placed in the fireproof building of the Soci- 
ety for safe-keeping. So firmly had it been 
attached to the wall in a stout frame, that the 
assistant secretary was unable to wrench it 
loose in time, and barely escaped with his own 
life by dropping on his hands and knees in the 
whirlwind of fire in the-street. St. James 
Church, at Huron and Cass streets, lost 
everything but its tower, containing the Me- 
morial to the soldiers of the Civil War. 

Another wave of the fire took the upper 
part of Dearborn Avenue, with New England 
and Unity churches,— only the walls of which 
stood—and all the homes around them, save 
one. Opposite Washington Square, itself sur- 
rounded by tall elm trees, stood a large frame 
house, with a mansard roof—the Mahlon D. 
Ogden place. The family were away, but un- 
selfish friends and strangers spent hours upon 
the roof, with wet blankets for weapons, and 
succeeded in saving this home — the only house 
on the North Side to stand after the fire had 
passed. It remained there until 1890, and 
was replaced by the Newberry Library. 


XXVi 


4 


FJntroduction 





Across the way from it, on Clark Street, was 
the Ezra B. McCagg place, with its $40,000 
library, valuable pictures, and remarkable con- 
servatories. By a generous freak, the fire 
left one of these conservatories untouched, 
with all the plants green within it, and one 
of these plants is to be seen to-day in the 
Lincoln Park Palm House. On the next 
street to the West, LaSalle Avenue, and look- 
ing down Locust Place, was the stately home 
of Chicago’s most typical citizen, Gurdon S. 
Hubbard. He, it will be remembered, visited 
Chicago first in 1818, and later set a certain 
pace for public-spirited citizens, such as buy- 
ing and presenting to the city its first fire- 
engine, and then ‘‘running with the machine,”’ 
himself, as its first Fire Marshal. His hos- 
pitable door was open to all who came that 
night; but nothing availed to save his home, 
nor that of his neighbor, David Fales. 

From Ontario Street to about Oak Street, 
the fire reached the North Branch of the river, 
cutting off retreat by way of the Chicago 
Avenue bridge, and causing the death of an 
unknown number of people, chiefly of the 
poorer classes. Rich and poor alike were 
driven to ‘‘The Sands’’ along the Lake 
Shore—a region once ‘‘cleaned out’’ by 
Long John Wentworth with an axe, but which 
seems to have relapsed. It extended south 
from Chicago Avenue to the river, and its 
northern end, with its accretions, has been the 

XXVii 


Jutroduction 


scene of dramatic events even in its reformed 
character as part of ‘‘Streeterville.’’ 

Between Chicago Avenue and North Ave- 
nue, on the western line of the fire, was a 
densely populated region filled with frame 
buildings. The inhabitants from these, as 
well as the wealthier classes from the avenues, 
were driven northward to Lincoln Park, which 
is said to have harbored seventy thousand of 
the homeless. The North Avenue bridge was 
left intact, the fire having been diverted to the 
east by the canal and crossing North Avenue 
at about Orchard Street. Many escaped by 
this means to the prairies of the West Side. 

The fire reached its northern limit at Ful- 
lerton Avenue, where, on the green borders of 
Lincoln Park, at about half-past ten on Mon- 
day night, after a light rain had begun to fall, 
it expired. The last house burned at this 
point was that of Dr. J. H. Foster, in the 
midst of a park-like property, a portion of 
which is still occupied by Dr. Foster’s daughter 
and her husband, Mr. George E. Adams. A 
proposition of the Chicago Historical Society, 
seconded by Burnham and Root, architects, 
to place a monument in Lincoln Park to mark 
the northern terminus of the fire, has not 
been carried into effect, although the Society 
did mark the place of the fire’s origin with a 
suitable tablet. 

The total area burned over, according to 
statistics for which we are indebted to Prof. 

XXviii 


Fntroduction 


Elias Colbert, was 2,124 acres; the number of 
buildings destroyed, 17,450; and the persons 
rendered homeless nearly a hundred thousand. 

Mr. Melville E. Stone, writing to Mr. C. 
C. P. Holden of the events of Monday the 
gth, said: ‘‘It must have been about II A. mM. 
that I met you at the corner of Monroe and 
Aberdeen, evidently in a hurry. You said you 
~ had taken possession of the First Congrega- 
tional Church, corner of Ann and Washington 
streets, in the name of the city, you being an 
alderman, and that a meeting of citizens would 
take place to see what could be done for the 
relief of the suffering and the protection of 
property. At your suggestion I went home 
and got my horse and buggy, and devoted 
the afternoon and evening among the people 
who crowded the prairies in the northwestern 
division, notifying them of the provision you 
had made for their care. . . . This was the 
first effort made by anyone to bring order out 
of chaos. The relief work then begun was 
taken charge of very soon by the Relief Soci- 
ety.’’ Meanwhile Mayor R. B. Mason, who 
afterwards made this church his headquarters, 
had met Mr. J. W. Preston and O. W. Clapp 
of the Chicago Board of Trade, and commis- 
sioned the latter, by means of a pencil message 
on an envelope, to receive and distribute goods 
which should come in over the railroads. In 
the same /ournal-£xtra which announced the 
fire was the notice that the Board of Trade 


xxix 


‘Jntroduction 


would hold a meeting on Tuesday at ten 
o’clock, in its new quarters at 51 and 53 Canal 
Street. It was decided at this meeting that 
the Board would carry out all contracts made 
before the fire. 

Without waiting for official action, police 
measures were instituted in various neighbor- 
hoods by private citizens, who patrolled the 
dark streets and alleys until relieved by the 
placing of the city under martiallaw. Vigilant 
work was done by these amateur policemen, 
one of whom, Dr. William F. Zimmerman, con- 
fesses to have stopped every man whom he 
saw smoking in his territory. 

The throwing up of innumerable little frame 
structures in the city after the Great Fire, was 
the occasion of smaller fires in 1873 and 1874; 
but at last the lesson was learned. Building 
restrictions of the most stringent character 
were instituted. ‘‘Chicago construction”’ 
took the place of marble ‘‘fronts.’’ By the 
end of two years, no stranger would have 
known that Chicago had “perished.” In 1893 
she was ready for the World’s Fair, and now 
she bids fair to become The City Beautiful. 
Not only that. The very awfulness of the 
peril passed through, the loss of material pos- 
sessions and of everything but mutual good 
will, seems to have bound her people together, 
and left to all succeeding generations a price- 
less legacy — the Chicago Spirit. 

Mementoes of the Fire have so accumulated 

XXX 


Jntroduction 


that the Historical Society has been obliged 
during the past year to open a ‘‘ Fire Room”’ 
where they may be seen by all. Grateful 
acknowledgment is hereby made to The Chi- 
cago Historical Society for the data from which 
the map is drawn, and for permission to print 
in full the narratives of Mrs. Alfred Hebard, 
“Mary Fales, H. W. S. Cleveland, Lambert 
Tree, and Arthur Kinzie,—collected by them 
in manuscript soon after the fire—to Mr. 
Horace White, now of New York, and Mr. 
Joseph Edgar Chamberlin, now of Zhe Boston 
Transcript, for permission to use their stories 
of the Fire, and to Prof. Elias Colbert, Mr. 
Henry E. Hamilton, and Alexander E. Frear 
of Chicago, for valuable advice and assistance. 
MABEL MCcILVAINE. 
331 Belden Ave., Chicago 


XXxXi 





Reminiscences of Chicago 
During the Great Fire 


Blackened and bleeding, helpless, panting, prone 
On the charred fragments of her shattered throne 
Lies she who stood but yesterday alone, 


Queen of the West! by some enchanter taught 
To lift the glory of Aladdin's court, 
Then lose the spell that all that wonder wrought. 


Like her own prairies by some chance seed sown, 
Like her own prairies in one brief day grown, 
Like her own prairies in one fierce night mown. 


She lifts her voice, and in her pleading call 
We hear the cry of Macedon to Paul— 
The cry for help that makes her kin to all. 


But haply with wan fingers may she feel 
The silver cup hid in the proffered meal— 
The gifts her kinship and our loves reveal. 


—Bret HARTE. 


Foseph Cdgar Chamberlin: 


{Reprinted by permission from ‘‘ Chicago and the 
Great Conflagration,’’ issued soon after the fire 
by Elias Colbert and Everett Chamberlin. ] 


WAS at the scene in a few minutes. The 

fire had already advanced a distance of 

about a single square through the frame 
buildings that covered the ground thickly north 
of De Koven Street and east of Jefferson 
Street—if those miserable alleys shall be 
dignified by being denominated streets. That 
neighborhood had always been a ¢ferra incog- 
nita to respectable Chicagoans, and during a 
residence of three years in the city I had 
never visited it. The land was thickly studded 
with one-story frame dwellings, cow-stables, 
pigsties, corn-cribs, sheds innumerable; every 
wretched building within four feet of its neigh- 
bor, and everything of wood —not a brick or 
a stone in the whole area. 

The fire was under full headway in this 
combustible mass before the engines arrived, 
and what could bedone? Streams were thrown 
into the flame, and evaporated almost as soon 


1Joseph Edgar Chamberlin at the time of the fire 
was areporter of twenty on the old Chicago Evening 
Post, afterward consolidated with Zhe Evening Mail, 


I 


Keminiscences of Chicaga 


as they struck it. A single fire-engine in the 
blazing forests of Wisconsin would have been 
as effective as were these machines in a forest 
of shanties thrice as combustible as the pine 
woods of the North. But still the firemen 
kept at work fighting the flames—stupidly and 
listlessly, for they had worked hard all of Satur- 
day night and most of Sunday, and had been 
enervated by the whisky which is always copi- 
ously poured on such occasions. I stepped in 
among some sheds south of Ewing Street; a 
fence by my side began to blaze; I beat a 
hasty retreat, and in five minutes the place 
where I had stood was all ablaze. Nothing 
could stop that conflagration there. It must 
sweep on until it reached a broad street, and 
then, everybody said, it would burn itself out. 
' Ewing Street was quite a thoroughfare for 
that region. It is a mere alley, it is true, 
but is somewhat broader than the surrounding 
lanes. It has elevated board sidewalks, and — 
is passable for teams in dry weather. On 
that night it was crowded with people pouring 
out of the thickly-settled locality between 
Jefferson Street and the river, and here the 
first panic began. The wretched female in- 
habitants were rushing out almost naked, im- 
ploring spectators to help them on with their 
burdens of bed-quilts, cane-bottomed chairs, 
iron kettles, etc. Drays were thundering along 
in the single procession which the narrowness 
of the street allowed, and all was confusion. 
2 


Joseph Edgar Chamberlin 


When the fire had passed Ewing Street, 
I hurried on to Harrison, aware of the fact 
that the only hope for the staying of the con- 
flagration was in the width of that street, and 
hoping that some more effective measures 
than squirting of water would be taken at that 
point. The same scene of hurry and con- 
fusion was repeated at Harrison on a larger 
scale than at Ewing; and that same scene 
kept on increasing in terror all night long as 
the fire moved northward. The crowd anx- 
iously watched the flames as they approached 
the street, and the universal remark was: ‘‘If 
it passes this, nothing can stop it but last 
night’s burned district.’’ At length the fire 
reached the street, and broke out almost simul- 
taneously for a distance of two squares. The 
two fire-engines which stood in Harrison 
Street fled in terror. Brands of fire driven 
on by the gale struck the houses on the north 
side of the street. Though mostly of brick, 
they ignited like tinder, and the fire swept 
northward again. 

Again I passed into Jefferson Street, keep- 
ing on the flank of the fire. In a vacant 
square filled with refugees from the fire and 
their rescued effects I stopped a few minutes 
to watch the fiery ocean before me. The open 
lot was covered with people, and a strange 
sight was presented. The fire had reached 
a better section, and many people of the 
better class were among those who had gath- 


3 


Keminiscences of Chicaga 


ered a few of their household goods on that 
openspace. Halfadozen rescued pianos were 
watched by delicate ladies, while the crowd 
still surged in every direction. Two boys, 
themselves intoxicated, reeled about, each 
bearing a small cask of whisky out of which 
he insisted upon treating everybody he met. 
Soon more casks of whisky appeared, and 
scores of excited men drank deeply of their 
contents. The result was, of course, that an 
equal number of drunken men were soon im- 
peding the flight of the fugitives. 

When I reached Van Buren Street, the 
southern limit of the Saturday night fire, I 
paused to see the end of the conflagration. 
A single engine stood on Van Buren Street, 
doing what seemed to me good service in pre- 
venting the fire from eating its way westward, 
against the wind, which it was apparently 
determined to do. Suddenly the horses were 
attached to the engine, and as soon as the 
hose was reeled it disappeared, whirling north- 
ward on Jefferson Street. What did it mean? 
I caught the words, ‘‘Across the river,’’ uttered 
doubtingly by a bystander. The words passed 
from mouth to mouth, and there was universal 
incredulity, although the suggestion was com- 
municated through the crowd with startling 
rapidity. 

There was a general movement northward 
and out of the smoke, with a view to discover 
whether it was really possible that the fire had 


4 


Joseph Edgar Chamberlin 


been blown across the river, and had started 
afresh on the south side. I went with the 
rest, crossed the burnt ground of the night 
before, stood on the embankment that had 
been Canal Street, and perceived, through the 
clouds of smoke, a bright light across the 
river. I rushed to the Adams Street viaduct 
and across the bridge. The Armory, the Gas 
Works, ‘‘Conley’s Patch,’’ and Wells Street 
as far north as Monroe were all on fire. The 
wind had increased to a tempest, and hurled 
great blazing brands over our heads. 

At this point my duty called me to my 
home in the West Division; but within an hour 
I was back again to witness the doom of the 
blazing city, of which I then had a full pre- 
sentiment. The streets on the West Side were 
as light as broad noon. I looked at my watch 
and saw that it was just two o’clock. As I 
ran down Monroe Street, with the burning 
town before me, I contemplated the ruin that 
was working, and the tears arose to my eyes. 
I could have wept at that saddest of sights, 
but I choked down the tears, and they did not 
rise again that night. 

When I crossed the river, I made a des- 
perate attempt to reach my office on Madison 
Street beyond Clark. I pressed through the 
crowd on Randolph Street as far as La Salle, 
and stood in front of the burning Court-house. 
The cupola was in full blaze, and presented a 
scene of the sublimest as well as most melan- 


5 


Reminiscences of Chicago 


choly beauty. Presently the great tower was 
undermined by the fire below, and fell to the 
bottom with a dull sound and a heavy shock 
that shook the earth. Somebody called out, 
‘‘Explosion!’’ and a panic ensued in which 
everything and everybody was carried west- 
ward. ThenI went to Lake Street, and found 
a torrent of sparks sweeping down that avenue. 
But I pulled my hat about my eyes, buttoned 
up my coat-collar, and rushed eastward, deter- 
mined to reach my office. I turned down 
Dearborn, and leaped through a maelstrom of 
scorching sparks. The fiery storm at length 
drove me into an open store, from which the 
occupants had fled. I seized a large blanket 
which they had left on the floor, wrapped it 
around my head and body, and sallied forth 
again. I went as far as Washington Street, 
but any attempt at further progress would have 
been madness. I beat a hasty retreat to Lake 
Street, and came down La Salle again to the 
immediate neighborhood of the fire. 

And now the scene of confusion had 
reached its height. Wagons were rushing 
through the streets laden with stocks of goods, 
books, valuable papers, boxes of money, and 
everything conceivable; scores of men were 
dragging trunks frantically along the sidewalks, 
knocking down women and children; fabulous 
sums of money were offered truckmen for con- 
veyances. The scene was indescribable. 

But, as large as was the number of people 

6 


Joseph Cogar Chamberlin 


who were flying from the fire, the number of 
passive spectators was still larger. Their eyes 
were all diverted from the skurrying mass of 
people around them to the spectacle of appalling 
grandeur before them. They stood transfixed, 
with a mingled feeling of horror and admira- 
tion, and while they often exclaimed at the 
beauty of the scene, they all devoutly prayed 
that they might never see such another. 

The noise of the conflagration was terrific. 
To the roar which the simple process of com- 
bustion always makes, magnified here to so 
grand an extent, was added the crash of fall- 
ing buildings and the constant explosions of 
stores of oil and other like material. The noise 
of the crowd was nothing compared with this 
chaos of sound. All these things—the great, 
dazzling, mounting light, the crash and roar 
of the conflagration, and the desperate flight 
of the crowd—combined to make a scene of 
which no intelligent idea can be conveyed in 
words. 

When it became too hot in Randolph Street, 
I retired to the eastern approach of the bridge 
on that street. A knot of men had gathered 
there, from whom all signs of excitement had 
disappeared. It was then almost four o’clock, 
and whatever excitement we had felt during 
the night had passed away. Wearied with 
two nights of exertion, I sat upon the railing 
and looked down on the most appalling spec- 
tacle of the whole night. The Briggs House, 


7 


Keminiscences of Chicago 


the Metropolitan House, Peter Schuttler’s 
wagon manufactory, Heath & Milligan’s oil 
establishment stored five stories high with 
exceedingly inflammable material, the Nevada 
Hotel, and all the surrounding buildings, were 
in a simultaneous blaze. The flames, propelled 
by variable gusts of wind, seemed to pour down 
Randolph Street in a liquid torrent. Then the 
appearance was changed, and the fire was a 
mountain over our heads. The barrels of oil 
in Heath’s store exploded with a sound like 
rattling musketry. The great north wall of 
the Nevada Hotel plunged inward with hardly 
a sound, so great was the din of the surround- 
ing conflagration. The Garden City House 
burned like a box of matches; the rapidity of 
its disappearance was remarked by everybody. 
Toward the east and northeast we looked 
upon a surging ocean of flame. 

Meanwhile a strange scene was being en- 
acted in the street before us. A torrent of 
humanity was pouring over the bridge. The 
Madison Street bridge had long before become 
impassable, and Randolph was the only outlet 
for the entire region south of it. Drays, ex- 
press wagons, trucks, and conveyances of every 
conceivable species and size crowded across 
in indiscriminate haste. Collisions happened 
almost every moment, and when one overloaded 
wagon broke down, there were enough men on 
hand to drag it and its contents over the bridge 
by main force. 

8 


Joseph Cogar Chamberlin 


The same long line of men dragging trunks 
was there, many of them tugging over the 
ground with loads which a horse would strain 
at. Women were there, looking exactly like 
those I had seen all night, staggering under 
weights upon their backs. Whole establish- 
ments of ill-fame were there, their half-dozen 
inmates loaded into the bottom of express 
wagons, driven, of course, by their ‘‘men.’’ 
Now and then a stray schooner, which, for want 
of a tug, had been unable to escape earlier from 
the South Branch, came up, and the bridge must 
be opened. Then arose a howl of indignation 
along the line, which, being near, was audible 
above the tumult. A brig lay above us in the 
stream, and the captain was often warned by 
the crowd that he must make his exit at once, 
if he wished to save his craft—a suggestion 
the force of which he doubtless appreciated, 
as he stood upon the quarter-deck calling fran- 
tically to every tug that passed. 

I saw an undertaker rushing over the 
bridge with his mournful stock. He had taken 
a dray, but was unable to load all of his goods 
into the vehicle, so he employed half a 
dozen boys, gave each of them a coffin, took a 
large one himself, and headed the weird pro- 
cession. The sight of those coffins, upright, 
and bobbing along just above the heads of 
the crowd, without any apparent help from any- 
body else, was somewhat startling, and the 
unavoidable suggestion was that they were 


9 


Reminiscences of Chicago 


escaping across the river to be ready for use 
when the débris of the conflagration should be 
cleared away. But just as men in the midst 
of a devastating plague carouse over each new 
corpse, and drink to the next who dies, so we 
laughed quite merrily at the ominous spectacle. 

At last it became too warm to be comfort- 
able on the east side of the river. The fire 
was burning along Market Street, and many 
were the conjectures whether Lind’s Block 
would go. The buildings opposite burned 
with a furnace heat, but Lind’s Block stands 
now, a monument to its own isolation. 

And then the question was everywhere 
asked, ‘‘ Will Chicago ever recover from this 
blow?’’ Many suggestions were offered on this 
subject. The general opinion was that the 
city could never again obtain a foothold. 
Said one old gentleman: ‘‘Our capital is wiped 
out of existence. You never can get what 
money is stored up out of those vaults. There 
isn’t one that can stand this furnace-heat. 
Whatever the fire consumes to-night is utterly 
consumed. All loss is total; for there will 
not be an insurance company left to-morrow. 
The trade of the city must go to St. Louis, to 
Cincinnati, and to New York, and we never 
can get hold of it again. We couldn’t tran- 
sact any business even if we had customers, 
for we haven’t got anywhere to transact it. 
Yes, sir, this town is gone up, and we may as 
well get out of it at once.’’ Thus all seemed 

10 


Joseph ECogar Chamberlin 


to talk, and there was none of that earnest, 
hopeful language of which I have heard so 
much since, and have been rejoiced to hear. 
But what else could I expect? These men 
stood facing the burning city. They saw those 
great hotels and warehouses toppling, one 
after another, to the ground. Their spirits 
were elastic, as subsequent events have proved, 
but on that terrible night they were drawn to 
their utmost tension, and the cord came near 
breaking. 

Tired with my two nights’ work, and of 
the sad sight before me, I joined the crowd, 
crossed the river, went up Canal Street and 
lay down on a pile of lumber in Avery’s yard. 
My position was at the confluence of the 
North and South branches, directly opposite 
the middle of the main river, and exactly on 
the dock. All solicitude for the remaining 
portion of the city, and all appreciation of the 
magnitude of the tragedy that was being acted 
across the river, had left me. I did not care 
whether the city stood or burned. Iwas dead 
so far as my sensibilities were concerned. 
Half a dozen fellows——strangers—were with 
me on the lumber-pile, and were as listless as 
myself. The chief matter which seemed to 
interest them was the probable weight of one 
of their party—a fat fellow whom they called 
Fred. I became quite interested in the sub- 
ject, and joined in the guessing. Fred kept 
us bursting in ignorance awhile, and then, in a 

II 


Keminiscences of Chicago 


burst of confidence, told us he weighed 206, 
and begged us not to mention it. 

Meanwhile, Wells Street bridge took fire, 
and, as affording something novel, attracted 
our attention for a few minutes. The south 
end of the bridge caught alight, and then the 
north end. But the north end burned less 
rapidly than the south, and soon outbalanced 
the latter, when, of course, the whole structure 
tipped to the northward, and stood fixed, one 
end in the water, at an angle of about sixty 
degrees. Then the fire communicated with 
the whole framework, till the bridge looked 
like a skeleton with ribs of fire. But presently 
the support underneath burned away, then the 
skeleton turned a complete somersault and 
plunged into the river, as if warmed into life 
it had sought refuge from the flames which 
were consuming it. 


When I had regained a footing in the 
favored West Division it was seven o’clock. 
Then a curious-looking crimson ball came up 
out of the lake, which they said was the sun; 
but oh, how sickly and insignificant it looked! 
I had watched that greatest of the world’s con- 
flagrations from its beginning to almost its 
end, and although the fire was still blazing all 
over the city with undiminished luster, I could 
not look at it. I was almost unable to walk 
with exhaustion and the effects of a long sea- 

12 


Joseph Edgar Chamberlin 


son of excitement, and sought my home for 
an hour’s sleep. As I passed up West Madi- 
son Street, I met scores of working girls on 
their way ‘‘down town”’ as usual, bearing their 
lunch-baskets, as if nothing had happened. 
They saw the fire and smoke before them, but 
could not believe that the city, with their means 
of livelihood, had been swept away during that 
night. 


13 


Alerander frear: 


[Reprinted from 7he New York World of 
October 15, 1871.] 


N Sunday night, October 8, I was at the 

Sherman House. I went there, at the 

request of my sister, to see if some of 
her friends who were expected from Milwaukee 
had arrived. I had promised to attend to the 
matter on Saturday, but was prevented by un- 
expected business. There was a large crowd 
of strangers and business men of the city at 
the hotel. The corridor and parlors were full 
of idlers, much as usual. While looking over 
the register some one said, ‘‘There go the 
fire-bells again’’; and the remark was made 
jocosely, ‘‘ They’ll burn the city down if they 
keep on.’’ I paid little attention to the con- 
versation, which did not interest me, and hav- 
ing ascertained that the names that I wanted 
were not on the register I sauntered in the 
corridor awhile, and meeting Mr. Nixon, the 
upholsterer on Lake Street, I sat down a 
moment. 


1Mr. Alexander Frear was a member of the 
Assembly of the State of New York, Commissioner 
of Public Charities, and a Commissioner of Emigra- 
tion in the city of New York. 


14 


Alerander Frear 





Mr. Nixon made the mistake of pointing out 
to me a person whom I knew very well by 
sight, and who lived in Chicago, insisting that it 
was George Francis Train; and while we were 
disputing about it, my nephew, a young man 
of eighteen, came up, and I appealed to him 
to identify the person. He then told us that 
a. big fire was burning on the West Side. I 
asked him if he would mind walking to Ewing 
Street, where my sister was stopping, and let- 
ting her know that her frinds were not in town; 
but he replied that I had better go myself, 
because the fire was in that vicinity, and he 
had a friend waiting for him upstairs. 

When I came down the wind was blowing 
fiercely through Clark Street to the river, and 
I had some difficulty in getting across the 
Court-house square. It could not have been 
ten o’clock, for they were singing in the 
Methodist church as I passed Follansbee’s 
bank. I noticed the glare of the fire on the 
West Side as I came along, but thought 
nothing of it. There were very few people 
out, and I did not meet with a policeman until 
I reached Monroe Street. He was walking 
rapidly towards me, and I asked him if he 
knew anything about the fire; he looked at 
me but made no reply, and kept hurrying on. 
There was a small party of men on the corner 
of Adams Street. I asked them the same 
question, and one of them said, ‘‘It must be 
a damn big fire this time; you can’t put out a 


15 


Keminiscences of Chicago 


high wind with water.’’ The rest of them 
said nothing, but I thought they looked a little 
scared. While I stood there a policeman 
came up Adams Street on horseback and 
turned into Clark Street. Some of them hal- 
looed to him, but he paid no attention. I kept 
on, but before I had reached the next street 
the cinders began to fall thick and fast all 
around me, and it was growing lighter all 
the time. 

A great many people were looking out of 
their windows, and the streets seemed to get 
full of people suddenly. They were not excited. 
They stood about in groups listening to the 
wind, that was making a noise very much like 
the lake on a stormy night. 

I went into a Dutch beer-saloon to get a 
cigar, seeing the door half open. The gas 
was burning, but the persons who kept the 
place were all in the street. I helped myself 
to a cigar from an open box that stood on the 
counter and left a stamp for it; lighting 
it at the gas-burner I went out without being 
questioned. When I was holding it up to the 
gas-jet I noticed for the first time that I was 
considerably excited myself; my hand shook 
and I could hear my heart beat. I don’t think 
I was two minutes in the place, but when I 
came out the cinders were falling like snow- 
flakes in every direction and lit the street, and 
there was a great hubbub of men and vehicles. 

I started to run toward Van Buren Street, 

16 


ae? ee, ot 
ene 


; 
ye re 
SA A 3 /F 











vb 
% 
i ay 


’ 
ns 


ee 
as 





Alerander Frear 


but the walks were so crowded with people 
and the cinders were blown so thickly and fast 
that I found it was impossible. Besides, the 
wind blew my hat off twice. I took to the 
middle of the street, and found that the crowd 
coming from the opposite direction was increas- 
ing. But it was difficult to see anything on 
account of the cinders. Somewhere between 
Van Buren and Polk streets I found the crowd 
jammed into the thoroughfare solidly. There 
was a four-story brick house on the east side 
that overlooked the others all around it. A 
man on top seemed to be gesticulating and 
shouting to the crowd, but whatever he said 
was lost in the wind. It was some time before 
I made out that he was shouting to someone 
in a window below, and the man below repeated 
it to the crowd. All I could distinctly hear 
was, ‘‘burning on both sides of the river,’ 
and just then there was a great pressure in the 
crowd of the people and a man on horseback 
forced his way through. He seemed to be a 
gentleman, and I thought an insurance officer. 
He had in his hand one of the little red flags 
that switchmen use, which he waved on either 
side. What he said I could not hear, but it had 
the effect of producing a panic in the throng. 

No sooner did I understand that it was 
impossible and dangerous to proceed farther, 
and had turned around with the purpose of 
running to the first bridge, than I saw the light 
of the fire extending far back in the direction 


17 


Keminiscences of Chicago 


I had come, the flames lighting the houses on 
the east side of Clark Street as far as I could 
see. I ran as fast as I could to the Adams 
Street bridge. Vehicles and people were 
streaming in from all the streets to the west. 
I paid little attention to anything, my anxiety 
to reach my sister’s house being very great. 
With difficulty I got to the bridge, which was 
beset by teams desiring to cross, and tugs 
screaming in the stream to get through. There 
was much confusion, and suddenly a rush of 
people was made toward me as the bridge 
began to swing, and I ran to get over. A 
woman, carrying a bureau drawer, and blinded 
by the sparks, in her desperation struck me in 
the breast with her burden, breaking the crystal 
of my watch and stunning me for a moment. 
It was 11:30 o’clock; while I held my watch 
in my hand a live coal fell on it as large as a 
silver half-dollar. All of Adams Street reach- 
ing to Des Plaines on the West Side was 
choked with people, but they were free from 
the terrible rain of cinders, the wind carrying’ 
them in a northeasterly direction across the 
river. Des Plaines Street was comparatively 
clear, and on turning into it I lost my hat. 
Without attempting to recover it I ran as fast 
as I could in the direction of Ewing Street. 
My sister’s house was out of the line of the 
fire, but there was no telling at what moment 
the wind would veer. My brother, who is a 
lumber merchant, was absent in Sheboygan. 
18 


Alerander #rear 


The house was occupied by his family, consist- 
ing of Mrs. Frear and the three children (two 
girls and a boy, all of them under fifteen years 
of age, the youngest, Johnny, a cripple with 
rheumatism), and a lodger, who was employed 
as a clerk in Mr. Frear’s office. The family 
was in great consternation. I told Mrs. Frear 
that I thought there was no present danger, 
as the fire was not burning this side of Jefferson 
Street, but was being blown swiftly to the 
east. We were within a block, however, of 
Jefferson Street, and the heat was intense, and 
the excitement of the neighborhood very great. 
I found that she had her clothing and valuables 
all packed in trunks, which were pulled into 
the hallway; and she told me that Mr. Wood, 
the clerk, had gone to get one of Mr. Farwell’s 
trucks to take her things to the warehouse on 
Wabash Avenue, she saying she would remain 
and look after the house until the danger was 
OVvers>;" 

Fortunately there was not much trouble in 
getting a coach, and I started as soon after 
as possible with the three children. The 
Kimballs were all abed, and I was some time 
ringing at the door, holding Johnny wrapped 
in a rug, before I roused them. 

The driver of the horses put his horses to 
their utmost speed in returning. When we 
reached the vicinity of Madison Street bridge 
he threw the door open and said we couldn’t 
get across. - The noise of the men and vehicles 


19 





Reminiscences of Chicage 


was so great that he had to shout at the top 
of his voice. We then drove up to Randolph 
Street, and here we were stopped again, the 
bridge being open. It seemed that the string 
of vessels passing through was endless. We 
were an hour and a half in getting back, I 
think. The whole of Ewing Street was bar- 
ricaded with vehicles and household effects. 

Mrs. Frear was much cooler now that her 
children were safe. Most of her valuables had 
been got off, and as it was no longer possible 
to get a dray up to the house, the heavy fur- 
niture had to remain. While we were talking 
Mr. Wood burst into the room, and said that 
the fire had reached Wabash Avenue and was 
sweeping all before it. His appearance as well 
as his language was terrifying. Nearly blinded 
by the flying embers he had dashed water on 
his head and face, and his matted hair and 
begrimed skin added to his frightened looks 
made him seem like another person. 

I begged Mrs. Frear not to alarm herself, 
and ran up to the roof. The house was a two- 
story and a half frame building, but it joined 
another which was an addition to a planing- 
mill. I clambered to the roof of the latter, 
and was nearly swept off by the wind. As near 
as I could make out Wood was right... . 
Wherever I could see at all the wind blew 
the burning houses into a mass of live coals that 
was dazzling. When I returned I found Mrs. 
Frear had her waterproof cloak on, and had 

20 


Alerander frear 


put her jewelry and money into a satchel and 
was ready to start. I begged of her to remain, 
saying that I would see to the safety of the 
children, but she only answered, ‘‘ My poor 
Johnny, my poor sick Johnny.’’ 

Mr. Wood and myself then endeavored to 
get another conveyance. The front steps and 
the sidewalks were thronged with terror- 
stricken women, and the street was encum- 
bered with luggage. The three of us fought 
our way through... till we reached Mr. 
McGowan’s in Halsted Street, and here we 
were fortunate enough to get a cab. Wood 
then went back to the house, and we started 
for Wabash Avenue, Mr. McGowan himself 
driving. I afterwards found out that he had 
to take us all the way to Clark Street on the 
North Side to get over the river, but at the 
time I did not notice our direction until we 
had crossed the river, being occupied in try- 
ing to pacify Mrs. Frear. We got as far 
as Washington Street in the Avenue when 
McGowan was stopped and got into an alter- 
cation with an officer. . . . I sprang out and 
was told that it was useless to go any farther, 
for the whole of the Avenue was on fire. The 
roadway was full of people, and the din of 
voices and the mélée of horses rendered unman- 
ageable by the falling embers was terrible. 

In the confusion it was difficult to get any 
information; but I was told that the block in 
which the Kimballs lived [the refuge of Mrs. 

21 


Reminiscences of Chicago 


Frear’s children] was burning, and that the 
people were all out. To add to my distress, 
Mrs. Frear jumped out of the vehicle and 
started to run in the direction of the fire. 
Nothing, I am satisfied, saved her from being 
crushed to death in a mad attempt to find her 
children but the providential appearance of an 
acquaintance, who told her that the children 
were all safe at the St. James Hotel. 

When we reached the hotel I found it 
impossible to get her through the crowd with- 
out trouble, and so I took her into Soldan & 
Ward’s hairdressing-room in the basement, 
and went upstairs to look for the children 
alone. There was a great deal of excitement 
in the house, but there seemed to be no appre- 
hension of danger from the fire at that distance. 
The guests and servants of the house were 
nearly all at the windows or down in the door- 
ways. I found that Mrs. Frear’s acquaintance 
had either intentionally or unintentionally 
deceived her. The children were not in the 
house. When I informed her of it she fainted. 
When she was being taken upstairs to the par- 
lor I found she had lost her satchel. Whether 
it was left in the cab when she jumped out, or 
was stolen in the house, I cannot say. It con- 
tained two gold watches, several pins and drops 
of value, a cameo presented to her by Mrs. 
Stephen A. Douglas, a medal of honor belong- 
ing to her husband (who was an officer in the 
First Wisconsin Volunteers during the war), 

22 


Alerander frear 


and about $200 in bills and currency were 
besides several trinkets of trifling valu 
Leaving her in the care of some la I 
then started for John V. Farwell’s storéSon 
Wabash Avenue, thinking it possible the ehul- 
dren were sent there, where their mother’s 
property was. When I came into Wabash’ 
Avenue the full extent of the fire and its. 
danger to the city became for the first timé 
apparent to my mind. I saw the flames dis- 
tinctly, and, remembering that they were two 
miles distant when I first saw them, I began 
to realize the awful nature of the calamity. I 
spoke to several persons on the street. They 
seemed to think the flames would be stayed 
when they reached the durable and massive 
structures, and that it was only the wooden 
buildings that caused such a furious burning. 
The Farwell stores were all closed. The 
watchman said there had been no goods, much 
less children, brought there. Ithenran as fast 
as I could through Randolph Street to the 
Sherman House, thinking we might have mis- 
taken the hotel. They had the hose laid on, 
and a party of men were on the roof putting 
out the cinders. I was told that the place had 
already been ignited twice. The corridor was 
a scene of intense excitement. The guests 
of the house were running about wildly, some 
of them dragging their trunks to the stairway. 
Everything was in confusion, and my heart 
sank within me as I saw the panic spreading 


23 








Keminiscences of Chicage 





among those who were the best protected. I 
looked out of one of the south windows of the 
house, and shall never forget the terribly mag- 
nificent sight I saw. The Court-house Park 
was filled with people, who appeared to be 
huddled together in a solid mass, helpless and 
astounded. The whole air was filled with the 
falling cinders, and it looked like a snow- 
storm lit by colored fire. The weird effect of 
the glare and the scintillating light upon this 
vast, silent concourse was almost frightful. 

While in the corridor of the Sherman House 
I encountered my nephew, and he asked me 
if I wanted to see the fire, saying he had one 
of George Garrison’s horses and only wanted 
a rubber blanket to throw over him to protect 
him from the sparks. I told him about Mrs. 
Frear, but he thought there was no reason to 
worry. He got a blanket somewhere, and we 
started off in a light wagon for Wabash Avenue, 
stopping at Wright’s, under the Opera House, 
to get a drink of coffee, which I needed very 
much. There were several of the firemen of 
the Little Giant! in there. One of the men 
was bathing his head with whisky from a flask. 
They declared that the entire department had 
given up, overworked, and that they could do 
nothing more. 

While we stood there an Irish girl was 
brought in with her dress nearly all burnt from 

1 The first engine to turn a stream on the fire at Mrs. 
O’Leary’s barn, under John Campion’s direction. 

24 


Alerander Frear 


her person. It had caught on the Court-house 
steps from a cinder. When we went out a 
man in his shirt-sleeves was unhitching the 
horse; and when we came up he sprang into 
the wagon, and would have driven off in spite 
of us if I had not caught the horse by the 
head. He then sprang out and struck my 
nephew in the face, and ran toward State 
Street. 

We drove as rapidly as we could into 
Wabash Avenue, the wind sweeping the embers 
after us in furious waves. We passed a 
broken-down steamer! in the middle of the 
roadway. The Avenue was a scene of desola- 
tion. The storm of falling fire seemed to in- 
crease every second, and it was as much as we 
could do to protect ourselves from the burning 
rain and guide the horse through the flying 
people and hurrying vehicles. 

Looking back through Washington Street, 
toward the Opera House, I saw the smoke and 
flames pouring out of State Street, from the 
very point we had just left, and the intervening 
space was filled with the whirling embers that 
beat against the houses and covered the roofs 
and window-sills. It seemed like a tornado of 
fire. To add to the terrors, the animals, burnt 
and infuriated by the cinders, darted through 
the streets regardless of all human obstacles. 
Wabash Avenue was burning as far down as 
Adams Street. The flames from the houses 

1 Fire-engine. 

25 


Reminiscences of Chicago 


on the west side reached in a diagonal arch 
quite across the street, and occasionally the 
wind would lift the great body of flame, detach 
it entirely from the burning buildings, and hurl 
it with terrific force far ahead. 

All the mansions were being emptied with 
the greatest disorder and the greatest excite- 
ment. Nobody endeavored to stay the flames 
now. A mob of men and women, all scream- 
ing and shouting, ran about wildly, crossing 
each other’s paths, and intercepting each other 
as if deranged. We tried to force our way 
along the Avenue, which was already littered 
with costly furniture, some of it burning in the 
streets under the falling sparks, but it was next 
to impossible. Twice we were accosted by 
gentlemen with pocket-books in their hands, 
and asked to carry away to a place of safety 
some valuable property. Much as we may 
have desired to assist them, it was out of our 
power. Women came and threw packages 
into the vehicle, and one man with a boy hang- 
ing to him caught the horse and tried to throw 
us out. I finally got out and endeavored to 
lead the animal out of the terrible scenes. 

When we had gone about a block I saw that 
the Court-house was on fire, and almost at the 
same moment someone said the St. James had 
caught on the roof. I was struck on the arm 
by a bird-cage flung from an upper window, 
and the moment I released the horse he shied 
and ran into a burning dray-load of furniture, 

26 


Alerander Frear 


smashing the wheel of the wagon and throw- 
ing my companion out on his shoulder. For- 
tunately he was only bruised. But the horse, 
already terrified, started immediately, and I 
saw him disappear with a leap like that of a 
panther. 

We then hurried on toward the St. James 
Hotel, passing through some of the strangest 
and saddest scenes it has ever been my mis- 
fortune to witness. I saw a woman kneel- 
ing in the street with a crucifix held up before 
her and the skirt of her dress burning while she 
prayed. We had barely passed before a run- 
away truck dashed her to the ground. Loads 
of goods passed us repeatedly that were burning 
on the trucks, and my nephew says that he dis- 
tinctly saw one man go up to a pile of costly 
furniture lying in front of an elegant residence 
and deliberately hold a piece of burning pack- 
ing board under it until the pile was lit. 

When we reached the wholesale stores north 
of Madison Street the confusion was even 
worse. These stores were packed full of the 
most costly merchandise, and to save it at the 
rate the fire was advancing was plainly impos- 
sible. There were no police, and no effort was 
made to keep off the rabble. A few of the 
porters and draymen employed by these stores 
were working manfully; but there were coster- 
mongers’ wagons, dirt carts, and even coaches 
backed up and receiving the goods, and a 
villainous crowd of men and boys chaffing each 


27 


Keminiscences of Chicago 


other and tearing open parcels to discover the 
nature of their contents. 

I reached the St. James between two and 
three o’clock on Monday morning. It was 
reported to be on fire, but I did not see the 
flames then. Mrs. Frear had been moved in an 
insensible state to the house of a friend on the 
North Side. I could learn no other particulars. 

The house was in a dreadful state of dis- 
order. Women and children were screaming, 
in every direction, and baggage being thrown 
about in the most reckless manner. I now 
concluded that Mrs. Frear’s children had been 
lost. It was reported that hundreds of people 
had perished in the flames. 

There was a crowd of men and women at 
the hotel from one of the large boarding- 
houses in the neighborhood of State and Adams 
streets, and they said they barely escaped 
with their lives, leaving everything behind. 
At this time it seemed to me that the fire 
would leave nothing. People coming in said 
the Sherman House was going, and that the 
Opera House had caught. Finally, word was 
brought that the bridges were burning, and 
all escape was cut off to the north and west. 
Then ensued a scene which was beyond 
description. Men shouted the news and added 
to the panic. Women, half-dressed, and many 
of them with screaming children, fled out of 
the building. There was a jam in the doorway, 
and they struck and clawed each other as if in 

28 


Alerander Frear 


self-defense. I lost sight of my nephew at 
this time. 

Getting out with the crowd, I started and 
ran round toward the Tremont House. Reach- 
ing Dearborn Street, the gust of fire was so 
strong that I could hardly keep my feet. I 
ran on down toward the Tremont. Here the 
same scene was being enacted with tenfold 
violence. The elevator had got jammed, and 
the screams of the women on the upper floors 
were heart-rending. I forced my way upstairs, 
seeing no fire, and looked into all the open 
rooms, calling aloud the names of Mrs. Frear’s 
daughters. Women were swarming in the 
parlors; invalids, brought there for safety, 
were lying upon the floor. Others were run- 
ning distracted about, calling upon their hus- 
bands. Men, pale and awe-struck and silent, 
looked on without any means of averting the 
mischief. 

All this time the upper part of the house 
was on fire. The street was choked with 
people, yelling and moaning with excitement 
and fright. I looked down upon them from 
an upper window a moment, and saw far up 
Dearborn Street the huge flames pouring in 
from the side streets I had traversed but an 
hour ago, and it appeared to me that they were 
impelled with the force of a tremendous blow- 
pipe. Everything that they touched melted. 
Presently the smoke began to roll down the 
stairways, and almost immediately after the 


29 


Keminigeences of Chicago 


men who had been at work on the roof came 
running down. They made no outcry, but 
hurried from the house as if for their lives. 
I went up to the fourth story, looking into 
every room and kicking open those that were 
locked. There were several other men search- 
ing in the same manner, but I did not notice 
them. While up here I obtained a view of the 
conflagration. It was advancing steadily upon 
the hotel from two or three points. There 
was very little smoke; it burned too rapidly, 
or what there was must have been carried away 
on the wind. The whole was accompanied by 
a crackling noise as of an enormous bundle of 
dry twigs burning, and by explosions that fol- 
lowed each other in quick succession on all 
sides. 

When I was going down I found one of the 
men dragging an insensible woman downstairs 
by her shoulders. She was an unusually large 
woman, and had on a striped satin dress and 
a great quantity of jewelry, which I supposed 
she had put upon her person for safety. I 
assisted him to carry her down, and when she 
reached the lower story, to my surprise she 
suddenly recovered her consciousness and ran 
away followed by the man. 

From the street-entrance I could see up 
Dearborn Street as far as the Portland Block, 
and it was full of people all the distance, 
swaying and surging under the rain of fire. 
Around on Lake Street the tumult was worse. 


30 


Alerander fFrear 


Here for the first time I beheld scenes of vio- 
lence that made my blood boil. In front of 
Shay’s magnificent dry goods store a man 
loaded a store-truck with silks in defiance of 
the employees of the place. When he had 
piled all he could upon the truck, someone with 
a revolver shouted to him not to drive away or 
he would fire at him, to which he replied, 
‘«Fire, and be damned!”’ and the man put the 
pistol in his pocket again. Just east of this 
store there was at least a ton of fancy goods 
thrown into the street, over which the people 
and vehicles passed with utter indifference, 
until they took fire. 

I saw a ragamuffin on the Clark Street 
bridge, who had been killed by a marble slab 
thrown from a window, with white kid gloves 
on his hands, and whose pockets were stuffed 
with gold-plated sleeve-buttons; and on that 
same bridge I saw an Irish woman leading a 
goat that was big with young by one arm, while 
under the other she carried a piece of silk. 

Lake Street was rich with treasure, and 
hordes of thieves forced their way into the 
stores and flung out the merchandise to their 
fellows in the street, who received it without 
disguise, and fought over it openly. 

I went through to Wabash Avenue, and here 
the thoroughfare was utterly choked with all 
manner of goods and people. Everybody 
who had been forced from the other end of 
the town by the advancing flames had brought 


31 


fieminiscences of Chicago 


some article with him, and, as further progress 
was delayed, if not completely stopped by the 
river —the bridges of which were also choked 
—most of them, in their panic, abandoned 
their burdens, so that the streets and side- 
walks presented the most astonishing wreck. 
Valuable oil-paintings, books, pet animals, 
musical instruments, toys, mirrors, and bed- 
ding, were trampled under foot. Added to 
this, the goods from the stores had been hauled 
out and had taken fire, and the crowd, break- 
ing into a liquor establishment, were yelling 
with the fury of demons, as they brandished 
champagne and brandy bottles. 

The brutality and horror of the scene made 
it sickening. A fellow standing on a piano 
declared that the fire was the friend of the 
poor man. He wanted everybody to help him- 
self to the best liquor he could get, and con- 
tinued to yell from the piano until some one 
as drunk as himself flung a bottle at him and 
knocked him off it. 

In this chaos were hundreds of children, wail- 
ing and crying for their parents. One little 
girl, in particular, I saw, whose golden hair 
was loose down her back and caught afire. 
She ran screaming past me, and somebody 
threw a glass of liquor upon her, which flared 
up and covered her with a blue flame. 

It was impossible to get through to the 
bridge, and I was forced to go back toward 
Randolph Street. There was a strange and 


32 


Alerander Frear 


new fascination in the scenes that I could not 
resist. It was now daylight, and the fire was 
raging Closely all about me. The Court-house, 
the Sherman House, the Tremont House, and 
the wholesale stores on Wabash Avenue, and 
the retail stores on Lake Street were burning. 
The cries of the multitude on the latter streets 
had now risen into a terrible roar, for the flames 
were breaking into the river streets. 

I saw the stores of Messrs. Drake, Hamlin, 
and Farwell burn. They ignited suddenly all 
over in a manner entirely new to me, just as I 
have seen paper do that is held to the fire until 
it is scorched and breaks out ina flame. The 
crowds who were watching them greeted the 
combustion with terrible yells. 

In one of the stores—lI think it was Ham- 
lin’s—there were a number of men at the 
time on the several floors passing out goods, 
and when the flames blown over against it 
enveloped the building, they were lost to sight 
entirely; nor did I see any effort whatever 
made to save them, for the heat was so intense 
that everybody was driven as before a tornado 
from the vicinity of the buildings. 

I now found myself carried by the throng 
back to near Lake Street, and determined, if 
possible, to get over the river. I managed to 
accomplish this, after a severe struggle, and 
at the risk of my life. The rail of the bridge 
was broken away, and a number of small boats 
loaded with goods were passing down the 


33 


Reminiscences of Chicage 


stream. How many people were pushed over 
the bridge into the water I cannot tell. I 
myself saw one man stumble under a load of 
clothing and disappear; nor did the occupants 
of the boats pay the slightest attention to him 
nor to the crowd overhead, except to guard 
against anybody falling into their vessels. 

Once over the river I felt safe. It seemed 
to me highly improbable that the fire would 
leap the stream, which at this point is the 
widest. Alas! those who were there told me 
that the flames of the burning storehouses on 
Water Street were blown into the windows on 
the opposite side, and that before the houses 
that line the south side were half consumed 
those on the other were crackling and flaming 
with intensity. I went through North Water 
Street, meeting a frantic multitude teeming 
from each of the bridges, and by a tiresome 
detour got round to the West Side. When I 
arrived at my sister’s house I found my nephew 
there, who informed me that Mrs. Frear had 
been taken to a private house in Huron Street, 
and was perfectly safe and well cared for. 

I was wet and scorched and bedraggled. My 
clothes were burnt full of holes on my arms and 
shoulders and back. I asked Wood to make 
some coffee, which he promised to do, and I fell 
down in the hallway and went to sleep. I 
could not have lain there half an hour when 
Wood awoke me, saying that the fire was 
sweeping everything before it in the direction 


34 


Alerander Frear 


of Lincoln Park, and that Mrs. Frear must be 
moved again. We both started out then, and 
walked and ran as fast as we could in the 
direction of the North Side. 

It was about 8:30 o’clock. We could see 
across the river at the cross streets that where 
yesterday was a populous city was now a mass 
of smoking ruins. All the way round we en- 
countered thousands of people; but the excite- 
ment had given way to a terrible grief and 
desolation. Des Plaines and the northern part 
of Jefferson Street were piled up twelve and 
fifteen feet high with goods. Luckily Wood 
knew where to find Mrs. Frear, and he arrived 
at the house just in time to get her into a 
baker’s wagon, which Wood and I pulled for 
half a mile. She was in a terrible condition, 
being hysterical, and when we were in Des 
Plaines Street again there came an omnibus, 
loaded with frightened children, through Lake 
Street. They were crying and screaming, and 
Mrs. Frear heard them and began to screech 
at the top of her voice. The man who was | 
driving the omnibus stopped and yelled after 
us to know where we were taking that woman. 
It was impossible to get the wagon through 
the street on account of the goods, and so we 
were forced to go half a mile farther out of 
our way. 

Once at home a number of neighbors came 
to her assistance, and about four o’clock in the 
afternoon word came from the Kimballs that 


35 


Reminiscences of Chicago 


the children were all safe out at Riverside. I 
spent the greater part of the day in searching 
for her property without avail. I have lost 
nothing myself by the fire but what I can 
recover, but on Monday afternoon I went to 
bed with a sick headache and a fever, which 
were the result of mental excitement rather 
than physical exposure. 


36 





mo 


Y y) | IF | Cerny aa | eB 
I aS 
: So ir 


f ag 
2 a A 
Se 
: Ao NT 
A Po A 
= a ar tots 
ZA 4 z 
/ \ 
5. >* 
° 





1G@ COURSE OF THE CHICAGO FIRE OF 187] 











[ee 


Fullerton Ave. 


Va 
it 


= 
VA 


Asylum Place 


Bee 
H 












Orchard St. 





% 
I 
oy 
ur 


North Ave, 


Sie | 




















ae 


| 
| 





[| 
= 
= 
= 
ia 
= 
By 
WA 
Ed 
es 
italy, 


eS 
So a 
JODO Co36 
Pe EE 
POE 
PASE) 





| 









Bias 
PILI 





Ea 


on ep He a a 

en a oe 

| SES 

| Beaceo = gue 
iin 


ee: 


Twelfth St. 9 * 


Madison St. 
SoS ccc 


Se 


Oct. 


ole 





Tae | oa St 





Taylor Street 


Ann Street © 
Morgan St. 
Halsted St. 

Des Plaines St 
Jefferson St. 
Clinton St. 


ape" 


ts 
LS 


be 
aD 


= 
Et 


Ramin 


A 


a 
o 
= 


a 


=) 


Oc 


ATA 


wCanal St. 


OEE It 
OODO0UO0ED0o 


° 


2] 


= 
6 


2] 


ae 








2 | 
Ce 
J 
3 
o 
” 


as 
ae 











Galena & Chgo U.R. R. 


4 


jm 


4? 
BES 


Binnie, | 


: es eg 








! Catholic 


Cemetery 


a 
ey bee Schiller St.— 





WOU 


ste LILI 





INOG0GCO0 





BOCCrnc 








SA 


z 


eee ciaed 


Clin 








a RR 








|_J 











Fifth Ave 
State Street 
Wabash Avenue 


Michigan Southern RR 


KEY TO MAP 


0 Saturday Night Fire 18a Horace White Residence 
1 Lull & Holmes’s Planing Mill 19 Farwell Hall 
2 Home of Mrs. Patrick O'Leary 20 Otis Block 


3 Gas Works . 21 Reynolds Block 

4 Armory 22 Tribune Building 

5 Conley’s Patch 23 McVicker’s Theatre 

6 Michigan Southern Depot 24 Times Building 

7 Grand Pacific Hotel 25 Nevada Hotel 

8 Palmer House 26 Chamber of Commerce 
9 Wabash Ave. Methodist Church 27 Brunswick Hall 

10 Michigan Ave. Hotel 28 Methodist Church 


11 Terrace Row 29 Portland Block 


12 Trinity Church 30 Court House 
--——- 13. Bigelow Hotel 31 Crosby’s Opera House 
14 Lakeside Publishing Co. 32 St. James Hotel 


fs sitcom pul 33 First National Bank 
. he 34 Field, Leiter & Co. 


ve 35 Booksellers’ Row 
oe is: mY . he ante Mies fle 





37 Second Presbyterian Church 
38 First Congregational Church 
39 Avery’s Lumber Yard 

40 Lind Block 

4) Schuttler Wagon Factory 
42 Briggs House 

43 Metropolitan Hotel 

44 Metropolitan Block 

45 Sherman House 

46 Wood's Museum 

47 Matteson House 

48 Marine Bank 

49 Shay’s Dry Goods Store 

50 Tremont House 





Michigan Ave. 


51 Illinois Central R. R. Land Dept. 


52 Wright Bros. Livery Stable 
53 Galena Elevator 
54 McCormick Reaper Factory 





Ipinois Ceatr 


ING COURSE OF THE CHICAGO FIRE OF 1871 


to. 
} 


MAP 











COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY 
R.R. DONNELLEY & SONS CO, 


55 Chicago Historical Society 

56 Robt. A. Kinzie Residence 

57 Haines H. Magie Residence 

58 Lambert Tree Residence 

59 William B. Ogden Residence 
60 Walter L. Newberry Residence 
61 Isaac N. Arnold Residence 

62 Julian S. Rumsey Residence 
63 George F. Rumsey Residence 
64 Water Works 

65 Lill’s Brewery 

66 New England Congregational Church 
67 Unity Church 

68 Mahlon D. Ogden Residence 
69 Ezra B. McCagg Residence 

70 Gurdon S. Hubbard Residence 
71 David Fales Residence 

72 Dr. J. H. Foster Residence 


( 
| 
J 


fers. Alfred Hebard' 


[From a manuscript in the possession of The 
Chicago Historical Society.] 


necticut, with my husband and daughter, 
to our home in Iowa, it was found neces- 
sary, as often before, to spend Sunday in 
Chicago; and all through the weary hours of 
October 8, 1871, we were enjoying pleasant 
anticipation of the rest and comfort so sure to 
be found at the Palmer House. Arriving late, 
and leaving most of our baggage at the Union 
Depot, we were soon established at the hotel, 
which seemed almost like a home to us. The 
wind was high on Sunday morning, and kept 
increasing; and as we walked to church, cover- 
ing our faces from the dust, my husband re- 
marked, ‘‘ How fortunate that the fire was last 
night instead of to-day.”’ 
Returning from an evening service, we were 
told that another fire had broken out in the 
1Mrs. Alfred Hebard was a cousin of Gurdon 
Saltonstall Hubbard. She married Colonel Alfred 
Hebard in 1837, and they became pioneer settlers of 
Iowa. Colonel Hebard was afterward United States 
Commissioner to the Paris Exposition in 1889, and 


died in 1896. Mrs. Hebard has just died (Nov. 7, 
1915) in her I0Ist year. 


37 


J rectiut, wit from New London, Con- 


Keminiscences of Chicago 


western part of the city and was progressing 
rapidly. We immediately took the elevator 
to the upper story of the Palmer, saw the fire, 
but, deciding that it would not cross the river, 
descended to our rooms in the second story 
to prepare for sleep. Husband and daughter 
soon retired; I remained up to prepare for the 
morrow’s journey, and thus gain a little time 
for shopping before the departure of the train 
at I1 A.M. Feeling somewhat uneasy, I fre- 
quently opened the blinds, and each time found 
the light in the streets increased until every 
spire and dome seemed illuminated. I aroused 
my husband, asking him to go out and investi- 
gate once more, which he did, telling me, on 
his return, not to be alarmed, as there was no 
danger in our locality. 

About 11 p.m. I retired, but could not sleep, 
and it seemed not more than half an hour before 
there was a rapping at every door, and finally 
at ours, to which my husband responded very 
coolly, ‘‘What’s wanted?’’ ‘‘ Fire, sir!’’ was 
the answer, and the same moment we were on 
our feet. Our daughter was awakened, toilets 
soon made, and no time wasted in gathering 
together bags and shawls ready for departure. 
By this time my husband, who had stepped 
out to reconnoiter, returned, saying that every- 
one was stirring, and that he saw gentlemen 
dragging their own trunks down the stairs. 
The clerks at the office assured him there was 
no immediate danger, but they thought it well 

38 


firs, Alfred Hebard 


enough to be prepared. Then we all went 
once more to the seventh story, looked in vain 
for any evidence that the fire was decreasing, 
returned to our room, picked up our parcels, 
including the trunk (for no porters were to be 
found), descended to the office, paid our bill, 
and sat down to watch and wait. Finally, 
leaving our daughter in charge of the baggage, 
I went with my husband into the street, and 
around to the rear of the building where the 
fire was distinctly visible and apparently only 
two blocks from us. 

Within the house the perfect quiet had 
astonished us—every man taking care of his 
own, silently and rapidly, few words being 
spoken; only some ladies unaccompanied by 
gentlemen consulting together in whispers 
what they should do if compelled to leave the 
house. Outside we found confusion. Irish 
women with beds upon their shoulders crying 
noisily; children following as best they might; 
and all going— they knew not whither — only 
away from their burning homes. 

Evidently the Palmer House was in great 
danger, and it was better to leave it now than 
to wait; but how to remove our baggage was 
the next question. Once we thought we had se- 
cured a cart or a wagon, but no sooner was the 
trunk thrown on than it was pulled off again by 
someone Claiming a prior right, and we were 
glad to accept the services of two boys, who, 
for sufficient compensation, agreed to carry it 


39 


Keminigcences of Chicago 


between them; and thus we sallied forth, a 
little before I A.m., to reach, if possible, the 
house of my relative, Mr. G. S. Hubbard, on 
La Salle Street, a long mile and a half from 
the hotel. Our boys ran at full speed, and 
we followed, crossing State Street bridge amid 
a shower of coals driven by the furious wind 
from burning buildings and lumber yards, and 
which, seeming to be caught by an eddy, were 
whirled in our faces. 

The crowd thickened every moment; women 
with babies and bundles, men with kegs of 
beer —all jostling, scolding, crying, or swear- 
ing; and we were thankful to turn from this 
great thoroughfare to a more quiet street, call- 
ing to the boys to slacken their speed and give 
us a chance to breathe. It must have been 
1:30 A.M. when we reached Mr. Hubbard’s, 
thankful that we had, as we supposed, found a 
place of safety. We dismissed our boys with 
$10 for their services, and, ringing for admit- 
tance, were met at the door by our friends, 
who were all astir—less on account of appre- 
hension for their own safety than a desire to 
help others. Soon other friends of the family 
began to arrive, some already homeless, until 
the rooms were filled. 

The fire, meanwhile, was coming nearer, and 
just as we began in earnest to pack neces- 
sary things for removal, the Gas Works were 
destroyed and candles had to be resorted to. 
Everyone thought the house might be saved, 


40 


firs, Alfred Hebard 


standing as it did on a corner and discon- 
nected from every other building, but we worked 
on through the night, preparing for the worst, 
and running often to the garret to see if the 
worst was not over. 

In the early morning men came, tore up 
carpets to cover the roof, draining both cis- 
terns to keep the carpets wet, hoping if pos- 
sible to stop the fire at that corner. Oh, how 
they worked! The thoughtful family provided 
refreshments as long as it was possible, and 
when all supplies were exhausted the men 
labored on, panting and parched with thirst, 
drinking the very dregs of the cistern water 
from tubs in the kitchen as they passed 
through. Allsaid, ‘‘ This house will not burn!’’ 
but they might as well have tried to quench 
Vesuvius. The heat increased. A wooden 
block near by flashed into flame, and at II a. M. 
the cornice was blazing, and we were obliged 
to go out through the alley to escape the heat 
and cinders; but where to go we could not tell. 

From this point it is impossible for me to 
describe the course of our wanderings. I only 
know that we crossed to the west side of the 
river and reached some depot—TI think the 
Northwestern—in season to see the train 
departing, but hearing that a train on the 
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad would 
leave about 3 Pp. M., we again set forth. 

It was a weary march of many miles after 
leaving La Salle Street. Exhausted and foot- 


AI 


Reminiscences of Chicago 


sore, we often sat on doorsteps and curbstones 
to rest; drank beer at the street corners; dropped 
to sleep while waiting to be served; and finally, 
at a little station in the outskirts of the city, 
in company with other refugees like ourselves, 
we patiently waited for the departure of the 
train for Aurora, where we passed the night. 
Strange to say, we lost nothing by the fire— 
the baggage at the Union Depot was all moved 
and protected; the few things at Mr. Hubbard’s 
house were not stolen, like some of theirs, but 
were carefully restored to us. 

And now, looking back after the lapse of 
nine years! the whole scene seems like a fearful 
dream; and yet, strange as it may seem, there 
are some pleasant things to be remembered; 
and since it was to be, I have never regretted 
that we were allowed to see that burning city. 
Having nothing of our own at stake, we could 
perhaps look on more coolly than some others. 
I remember being impressed at the time with 
the different phases of character so suddenly 
unveiled. The dear friends who so kindly 
sheltered us in our extremity, and who, for the 
last time, threw open those hospitable doors, 
not to friends merely, but to strangers as well — 
feeding the hungry, helping and sympathizing 
with those whose trials seemed greater than 
they could bear; those friends who looked on 
calmly as the devouring flames approached their 
beautiful dwelling, showing plainly that their 

1This was written in 1880. 


42 


firs. Alfred Hebard 


treasure was laid up in a better country, where 
they looked for ‘‘a house not made with hands.’’ 
Some came there, trembling and fearful, wholly 
broken down, as it were, with their own grief; 
some came professedly to help—really to pil- 
fer; but the majority were calm, earnest, res- 
olute helpers; and if ready hands and willing 
feet could have availed anything, that house 
would have beensaved. Asitis, we are thank- 
ful that lives were spared, new comforts pro- 
vided, and faith strengthened in Him who said, 
‘*Not as the world giveth, give I unto you.”’ 


43 


bd. Ww. S. Cleveland: 


[From a manuscript dated November 10, 1871, and 
now in the possession of The Chicago 
Historical Society.] 


HILE the events of the Great Fire are 
still fresh in my memory I wish to 
record my personal experiences and 

observations for future reference if required. 
They are necessarily confined within narrow 
limits, as my efforts to save my own property 
made it impossible to pay other than inciden- 
tal attention to the scenes around me, yet the 
simple narrative of what I did and saw may 
hereafter possess interest. 

I was at the time, and am still, boarding 
with my wife at 883 Indiana Avenue, S. E. 
corner of 18th Street, which is more than a 
mile from the nearest point of the burnt dis- 
trict; and it seems now that our being at this 
place was almost a special dispensation, as we 
had moved here only the Monday previous 
from No. 284 Wabash Avenue, three doors 
south of Van Buren Street, which house was 
consumed. . . . Moreover, before coming here 

1H. W. S. Cleveland was a landscape architect, 
and in 1872 was appointed landscape architect of the 


South Park Board, and was responsible in a large 
measure for the development of that system. 


44 


b, w. S. Cleveland 


we had seriously thought of taking a house on 
the North Side, as some of our friends there 
were urgent we should do, where we should 
most certainly have lost everything we had. 

My wife’s sister, Mrs. Bruce, of Bangor, 
was with us, having been some weeks in the 
city—her first visit to us. 

On the night of Saturday, October 7th, there 
was a great fire on the West Side, of which 
we saw the light; and on Sunday morning I 
took my early walk to the ruins, and brought 
back the Sunday 77zduxe containing an account 
of the ‘‘ Great Fire,’’ and at breakfast we were 
discussing it as a terrible calamity, little dream- 
ing how soon it would sink into insignificance 
in comparison with the destruction which fol- 
lowed. 

On Sunday night when we went to bed, 
before ten o’clock, another alarm had been 
sounded, and we could see by the bright light 
in the west that another fire was raging, and 
from the direction we thought it must have 
broken out anew from the ruins of the night 
before. It was evidently distant, and as the 
scenes at a fire have little attraction for me I 
felt no inclination to go to it, and we went to 
bed at the usual hour. 

About two o’clock Monday morning we were 
awakened by my son Ralph, who knocked at 
the door to tell us that Mr. Thayer, with whom 
we boarded, had come from the fire to rouse 
the family to come and see it, as it had got 


45 


Keminiscences of Chicago 


beyond the control of the firemen and was 
sweeping everything before it. My wife sum- 
moned her sister, but before we were ready 
Ralph went off with Mr. Thayer and his family. 

We went down Wabash Avenue, the streets 
being lighted by the glare so that we could 
see people several blocks from us. We sup- 
posed on starting that the fire was on the West 
Side, and meant to go west on Twelfth Street, 
but before we got there we learned that it 
had crossed the river, and we therefore kept 
on down Wabash Avenue, which was rapidly 
becoming thronged with people. My wife 
began presently to urge me to leave her and 
Mrs. Bruce, and to go to my office, which she 
thought must be in danger; but I could not 
believe it possible the fire could make its way 
through such a compact mass of brick and 
stone as it would have to encounter before 
reaching my office, which was in the third 
story of the Shepard Building at the southeast 
corner of Dearborn and Monroe streets. 

By the time we got to Hubbard Court, how- 
ever, my Own apprehensions were aroused, and 
as the streets were as light as day and thronged 
with people, I felt no hesitation in leaving 
the ladies. They seated themselves on the 
steps of the church at the corner of the Court, 
and I went on to Monroe, and then west to 
Dearborn. 

The fire had then reached La Salle Street, 
two blocks from Dearborn, and was surging 

46 


b. w. SD. Cleveland 


on like a sea. It was obvious that there was 
scarcely a chance that the Shepard Building 
could be saved. I went in at the Monroe 
Street entrance, and on going into my Office, 
which was as light as day from the glare of 
the fire, the first thing my eye lighted on was 
my shawl rolled and strapped as I had left it 
on my return on Saturday from Indianapolis. 

This made me think of my Maynard rifle, 
which I am accustomed in traveling to carry 
rolled in my shawl, and my first act was to 
open my gun case and take out the stock and 
the two barrels, and roll and strap them in 
my shawl. I also took the bullet pouch, con- 
taining a few cartridges and appendages, and 
a little “Zgnum vitae mallet which my son 
Henry had turned for me, and which I resolved 
for his sake to save, and so thrust it into my 
pocket. Then I opened the drawers and seized 
a few papers and instruments which I could 
carry in my pockets, and slinging my shawl 
over my shoulder, hurried back as fast as 
possible to Hubbard Court, where my wife 
and Mrs. Bruce were waiting for me. I gave 
them a roll of plans and Henry’s mallet, and as 
the streets were full of people and light as day 
there seemed no necessity of my remaining 
with them; I accordingly left them to make 
their own way home, and returned to my office 
to try to save some of its contents. 

The streets were thronged with fugitives 
carrying whatever they could save on their backs 


47 


Keminiscences of Chicago 


or in wagons or wheelbarrows, and, in many 
instances, dragging trunks by a rope through 
the handle. But there was little or no confu- 
sion, and nothing like a panic. Everybody 
seemed cool and collected and exerting himself 
to save his own and others’ property, or seek- 
a good position for observation, and it is a 
sufficient refutation of the absurd stories which 
have since been circulated of outrages, lynch- 
ings, etc., to state the simple fact that my wife 
and her sister after I left them, which was 
about 3 A.M., were a long time walking about 
the streets in the vicinity of the fire as mere 
spectators, and finally returned home before 
daylight without ever a feeling of insecurity, 
or receiving an uncivil word from anyone. It 
must be borne in mind, however, that they were 
to windward of the fire, and of course were in no 
danger from it, and felt nothing of the suffocat- 
ing smoke and storm and cinders, which carried 
the fire northward with such fury that those 
who were to leeward had to fly for their lives. 

After leaving my wife, I deposited my shawl, 
with my rifle in it, at a friend’s house, corner 
of Wabash Avenue and Harrison Street, and 
then hurried back to my office. I ought to 
mention that Mr. S. S. Greeley, City Surveyor, 
had his office connecting with mine, but as he 
lived on the North Side he had all he could do 
to save the lives of his family, and of course 
made no attempt to reach his office —which 
indeed would have been impossible. 


48 


b. w. DS. Cleveland 


I had hardly entered my office and begun 
getting together my most valuable articles 
when Mr. Greeley’s clerk, John Newman, 
came in and told me that he had already re- 
moved the most valuable papers from the safe, 
and carried them, with Mr. Greeley’s note- 
books, to the corner of State Street; where a 
friend of his was watching them while he came 
back for more. 

I then got together all my account books and 
papers of value, including two large scrap- 
books in which I had preserved all my published 
communications to newspapers, periodicals, 
etc., for twenty years past. These I wrapped 
in strong paper and tied them up, helped 
Newman do up various packages, and then 
shouldering my transit, which was a very val- 
uable instrument, and as much else as I could 
carry, we went down to State Street, where we 
found his friend watching the things he had 
previously left there. 

The wind by this time had increased to a 
gale from the southwest, and the dust was 
blinding. Wethen . . . decided wehad better 
move the things we had saved to a greater 
distance from the fire, and accordingly carried 
them all down to Wabash Avenue and placed 
them on the sidewalk against the wall of the 
building at the southwest corner. It was a 
brick building which had been a dwelling house, 
but was then occupied by various offices, 
among which was that of Dr. Cushing, dentist, 


49 


Reminiscences of Chicago 


whom we knew. Newman and I then went 
back to the Shepard Building, and while he 
was getting together various things of Mr. 
Greeley’s, I took from a closet in my office a 
large box in which were a variety of odds and 
ends, some of great value to me. . . . Inthis 
box I also had several pounds of powder in 
tin canisters, which I was anxious to get out 
of the way. 

Then I took out an old fustian coat from the 
closet and put it on over my other, and stuffed 
the pockets of both full of such things as I 
could thus carry off, and also took a drawer 
from my table and filled it with papers, instru- 
ments, etc., and tied a big sheet of strong 
brown paper over it, and finally took my old 
leather knapsack, stuffed it full of my most 
valuable books and strapped it on my shoulders. 
Then, taking my gun case under one arm, and 
the drawer under the other, Mr. Newman 
shouldered the big box, and thus we went down 
to State Street, by which time we were glad 
to change loads, Newman taking the gun case 
and drawer while I shouldered the big box, 
and thus we reached Wabash Avenue and 
deposited our loads with the property we had 
previously left there, and which had been 
guarded in our absence by Newman’s friend. 

We now thought it no longer prudent to 
return to the Shepard Building, and indeed it 
began to be evident that we must remove our 
things from the point we then occupied, but 


50 


b. Ww. S. Cleveland 


how to do it we were puzzled to know. We 
had brought it two squares with much labor, 
by making several trips. The nearest point 
we knew at which we could leave it with any 
certainty of safety was too far off forus,.. . 
even if we had a clear track; but by this time 
it was difficult to make one’s way through the 
crowd of people on the sidewalks and of 
vehicles in the streets, all loaded with articles 
of every imaginable description, and all endeav- 
oring to make their way against the pitiless, 
blinding storm of dust which was driven with 
acutely painful force in our faces. 

It was of course almost a hopeless task to 
attempt to get a cart, but Newman thought he 
might possibly find an express man whom he 
knew, and who, he was confident, would help us 
if he could. He accordingly set off in search of 
him, while I remained to watch the property. 
While he was. gone I set myself to rearrang- 
ing them in more compact and portable form. 
First I took from my knapsack some articles 
of little worth and threw them away, and put 
others in their places. In doing this I found 
some stout cord, with which I again tied up 
the bundles of note and account books... 
Then I rearranged my gun case, and stuffed 
in papers and whatever would go there, and 
finally piled them all up in such position that 
they could be easily seized for removal. Then 
I could do nothing but wait and watch the 
scenes around me. 


51 


Keminigrences of Chicago 


Looking west on Monroe Street from 
Wabash Avenue, I could see that the Honoré 
Block and the Post-office, on the southwest 
and northwest corners of Dearborn were in 
flames, but could not make out whether the © 
Shepard Building was yet on fire. The nearest 
point of the fire was the Palmer House, corner 
of State and Quincy streets, which was all in 
flames. Looking north on Wabash Avenue, 
I could see that it was all burning on the east 
side, north of Randolph Street, but had not 
yet got to the south of Randolph. 

The sidewalks as far as I could see were piled 
up with goods, which had been brought out from 
stores and houses to be ready for removal if 
opportunity offered. A poor Irish woman with 
a baby asleep in her arms sat upon the sidewalk 
close by my pile, with her back against the wall. 
She looked very anxious, but was perfectly 
quiet, till a rough-looking fellow came up witha 
bottle of whiskey in his hand, the neck of which 
he broke off against the wall, and then pro- 
ceeded to dispose of the contents with three 
or four companions, drinking from the broken 
bottle. Some of the whiskey was spilled upon 
the head of the child, and the woman looked up 
with an exclamation of impatience at his brut- 
ality. I thought by the looks of the men that 
they might give me some trouble, but they 
went off without other evidence of ruffianism 
than profanity; and this was the only instance 
in which I saw or heard any sign of brutality. 


52 


b. w. S. Cleveland 


Soon after a horse came tearing down the 
Avenue, with the wreck of a buggy at his 
heels, and I fully expected that serious mischief 
would ensue; but he made his way by some 
means through the crowd and disappeared 
without doing any injury that I could see. 
This was the only runaway I saw; and I was 
continually surprised at the sober, matter-of- 
fact way in which the horses did their work, 
showing no sign of alarm, notwithstanding the 
appearance of the streets was wholly unlike’ 
what they were accustomed to. 

It must have been at least an hour and a 
half that I remained watching the goods before 
I saw anyone I knew, and the first one was 
Newman’s friend, who had previously watched 
them. He came up with a smiling face to 
tell me that the Shepard Building was past 
danger, which seemed to me so absurd that I 
at first thought he was joking, and when he 
insisted on it, I set him down for a fool. 
Presently Newman appeared, and confirmed 
the story, which I still could not believe, 
though he assured me the occupants of many 
of the offices were carrying their things back 
to the rooms from which they had been taken. 
The crowds of people and piles of goods in 
the streets rendered it idle to attempt to get 
our things back to the office, and, on examin- 
ing the situation, we decided to deposit them 
in Dr. Cushing’s office. 

The volumes of smoke prevented our seeing 


53 


Keminiscences of Chicago 


any considerable distance, but Newman assured 
me that the Honoré Building and Bigelow 
Hotel, which were on the opposite side of 
Dearborn Street from the Shepard Building 
(between Monroe and Adams streets), were 
both destroyed; and as the Shepard was the 
only building on the east side in that block 
there was no longer any danger except from 
such cinders as might come from the ruins, as 
nothing else was left on the windward side. 

On State Street the Palmer House, at the 
corner of Quincy Street, was burned; but so 
far as we could see to the south the fire had 
not crossed to the east side of State Street. 
The foundations only had been built of the 
new Palmer House at the corner of Monroe 
and State, and it seemed, therefore, that there 
was scarcely a chance that the fire could reach 
the point where I had so long mounted guard 
over our goods, so, with the permission of the 
janitor, we put the whole of them in the back 
room, piling them carefully by themselves, and 
then started for the Shepard Building, little 
thinking we had taken our last look at them. 

Making our way through the crowd, we 
entered the Shepard Building at the north end 
on Monroe Street, and on going to my office 
found Ralph quietly looking out of the window 
at the ruins of the Honoré Building opposite, 
a large portion of the front wall of which fell 
into the street at that moment. 

Ralph told me that on first starting out he 


54 


b. w. SB. Cleveland 


went over to the West Side, and skirting to 
the windward of the fire, went north to Kin- 
zie Street, where he crossed the bridge to the 
North Side, intending to cross the main river 
at State or Rush Street, and so come up to 
the office. He went as far east as Dearborn 
Street; finding that the bridges were burned, 
and the fire running with fearful rapidity, he ~ 
retraced his steps to the West Side, and then 
had to go south to Twelfth Street before he 
could cross the river. He then made his 
way to the Shepard Building, through Third 
Avenue. 

When he reached Jackson Street, the Bige- 
low Hotel and Honoré Building were both in 
flames; and he covered his face and ran down 
the opposite side of the street to the Shepard 
Building, where, finding that we had carried off 
the things of most value, he went to work and 
took down the large photographs of Sarah’s 
house from the walls, together with a fine pair 
of deer’s horns, and my English bow and 
arrows which hung on them. He took all our 
plans (over two hundred) from the drawers, 
and rolled them up, and tied them with the 
cords which he took from the pictures, carried 
them down, and left them with a pile of furni- 
ture which a woman was watching on the side- 
walk, and came back to the office, where we 
found him. 

On examining the situation, I saw no reason 
to doubt the safety of the building. The Post- 


55 


Keminiscences of Chicago 


office, which was the diagonally opposite corner, 
the Honoré Building directly opposite, and the 
Bigelow Hotel a little farther south, were all 
destroyed; and immediately south, on our side 
of the street, was a vacant lot of half a square. 
Nothing was left to windward of us but ruins, 
and though the air was hot that came from 
them, there seemed little chance that the fire 
could now reach us. It seemed so incredible, 
and gave me so much the feeling of a reprieved 
criminal that I could hardly trust my senses; 
but the occupants of other offices in the 
building were busily at work bringing back 
the things they had carried away, and no one 
doubted that the danger was past; so, after 
mutual expressions of congratulation, I un- 
strapped my knapsack, which I had not pre- 
viously taken from my shoulders, took off my 
old coat with its pockets full of valuables, 
and, leaving them on our case of drawers, 
went with Ralph and brought up the things he 
had carried down. 

It was now about 7 a. M., and knowing how 
anxious my wife would be to hear from us, and 
feeling sure that I had good news to tell, I left 
Ralph and Newman in the office, and started 
for home. Remembering, however, that Mr. 
Thayer’s office was in the Zrzbune Building 
(corner Dearborn and Madison), and wishing 
to assure myself of its safety by actual inspec- 
tion, I made my way along Dearborn to Madi- 
son (the west side of Dearborn being all 

56 


b. Ww. J. Cleveland 


burned), and so-down Madison to Wabash 
Avenue, and then home. The 77zdune Build- 
ing was then unharmed, and I supposed was 
past danger. 

I found my family just sitting down to 
breakfast, which was eaten with lighter hearts 
for the good news I brought. Nobody knew 
anything about the condition of the North Side, 
though the opinion was unanimous that it must 
be swept clean if the fire crossed the river. 
There was a rumor that the Water Works were 
destroyed and the whole North Side, but no one 
could tell what was truth and what was rumor. 

After breakfast I prepared to return, and 
found that the fire was raging on the north 
side of Harrison Street, between Wabash 
Avenue and State Street, and on both sides of 
the Avenue as far as I could see. I went to 
try to ascertain the fate of the Shepard Build- 
ing. As I could not go through Harrison 
Street on account of the fire, I went south to 
Peck Court, and then west, through Polk 
Street, to Third Avenue. Tried there to go 
north, but could not go beyond Harrison. I 
managed to go one square west on Harrison 
to Fourth Avenue, which was burnt so clean 
on both sides that I could traverse it without 
difficulty, except that the smoke and hot air 
were at times very disagreeable. I could see 
but alittle way. I reached Van Buren Street, 
and then went east to Third Avenue, as Fourth 
was too fiery to admit further passage. 


57 


Keminiscences of Chicago 


On Van Buren Street, I first saw the effect 
of the fire on the wooden pavements, which in 
places had been burned in alternate little ridges 
and gutters not more than half an inch in 
depth. The pavement had nowhere sustained 
any serious injury, and much of it was not 
even scorched. 

From Van Buren Street I went through 
Third Avenue and Adams Street to Dear- 
born; and it was not till I reached that 
point that I could see that nothing remained 
of the Shepard Building but some fragments 
of the walls. I could go no farther, and started 
back through Third Avenue. I presently met 
two men who asked me if they could get 
through, and seemed to think I had come from 
unknown depths of the furnace before them. 
These were the only living beings I saw from 
the time I entered the burned district till I 
emerged again on Harrison Street, and the 
solitude seemed to render the desolation more 
impressive. 

Ralph made his appearance at dinner time, 
and reported that, after I left them, he and 
Newman stationed themselves at a window at 
the south end of the building to watch for 
cinders, as it was only from that quarter they 
apprehended danger. But it seems that the 
fire crept upon them unawares from the leeward 
side, and the first they knew of its approach 
was seeing flames darting through the windows 
at the northern end. They could not even 

58 


b. w. SD. Cleveland 


get down the stairs at that end, but had barely 
time to run into the office, where Ralph seized 
a roll of plans, and he and Newman together 
took a trunk between them, and ran down and 
out at the door on Dearborn Street, and then 
across the street to the alley behind the walls 
of the Post-office, where they were kept 
prisoners, and half suffocated with the smoke 
and heat for nearly two hours before they could 
make their escape, which they finally did by 
covering their faces and running out through 
Monroe and Clark streets, leaving the things 
they had saved, which they recovered some 
hours afterward. 


59 


Porace White: 


{Letter to Murat Halstead, Editor of Zhe Cincinnati 
Commerctal— Published in that newspaper, 
October, 1871.] 


S a slight acknowledgment of your 
thoughtful kindness in forwarding to 
us, without orders, a complete outfit of 

type and cases, when you heard that we had 
been burned out, I send you a hastily written 
sketch of what I saw at the Great Fire. . . 

The history of the Great Fire in Chicago, 
which rises to the dignity of a national event, 
cannot be written until each witness, who 
makes any record whatever, shall have told 
what he saw. Nobody could see it all—no 
more than one man could see the whole of the 
Battle of Gettysburg. It was too vast, too 
swift, too full of smoke, too full of danger, for 
anybody to see it all. My experience derives 
its only public importance from the fact that 
what I did, substantially, a hundred thousand 
others did or attempted—that is, saved, or 
sought to save, their lives and enough of their 
wearing-apparel to face the sky in. As you 
have printed in your columns a map of the 

1 Horace White was Editor of 7he Chicago Tribune 
at the time of the fire. 

60 


Dorace White 


burned district, I will remark that my starting- 
point was at my residence, No. 148 Michigan 
Avenue, between Monroe and Adams streets. 

What I saw at the Great Fire embraces 
nothing more heartrending than the destruction 
of property. I saw no human beings burned 
or suffocated in flame and smoke, though there 
were many. My brother early in the fray 
stumbled over the bodies of two dead men 
near the corner of La Salle and Adams streets. 
My wife saw the body of a dead boy in our 
own dooryard as she was taking leave of our 
home. Howit got there we knownot. Prob- 
ably it was brought there as to a place of 
safety, the bearers leaving and forgetting it, 
or themselves getting fast in some inextricable 
throng of fugitives. I saw no mothers with 
new-born babes hurried into the street and 
carried miles through the night air by the light 
of burning houses. I have a friend whose 
wife gave birth to a child within one hour of 
the time when the flames of Sunday night 
reddened the sky. Her home was in the 
North Division, which was swept clean of 
some ten thousand houses. This suffering 
lady was taken downstairs with her infant, and 
carried one mile to a place of supposed safety. 
She had not been there an hour when she was 
taken out a second time and carried a mile and 
a half westward. Blessed be God that she 
still lives and that the young child breathes 
sweetly on her bosom ! 

oI 


Keminiscences of Chicago 


I had retired to rest, though not to sleep 
[Sunday, October 8], when the great bell struck 
the alarm; but fires had been so frequent of 
late, and had been so speedily extinguished, 
that I did not deem it worth while to get up 
and look at it, or even to count the strokes of 
the bell to learn where it was. The bell 
paused for fifteen minutes before giving the 
general alarm, which distinguishes a great fire 
from a small one. When it sounded the gen- 
eral alarm I rose and looked out. There was 
a great light to the southwest of my residence, 
but no greater than I had frequently seen in 
that quarter, where vast piles of pine lumber 
have been stored all the time I have lived in 
Chicago, some eighteen years. But it was not 
pine lumber that was burning this time. It 
was a row of wooden tenements in the South 
Division of the city in which a few days ago 
were standing whole rows of the most costly 
buildings which it hath entered into the hearts 
of architects to conceive. I watched the in- 
creasing light a few moments. Red tongues 
of light began to shoot upward; my family 
were all aroused by this time, and I dressed 
myself for the purpose of going to the 77zbune 
office to write something about the catastrophe. 
Once out upon the street, the magnitude of 
the fire was suddenly disclosed to me. 

The dogs of hell were upon the housetops 
of La Salle and Wells streets, just south of 
Adams, bounding from one to another. The 

62 


Horace White 


fire was moving northward like ocean surf on 
a sand beach. It had already traveled an 
eighth of a mile and was far beyond control. 
A column of flame would shoot up from a 
burning building, catch the force of the wind, 
and strike the next one, which in turn would 
perform the same direful office for its neigh- 
bor. It was simply indescribable in its terrible 
grandeur. Vice and crime had got the first 
scorching. The district where the fire got its 
first firm foothold was the Alsatia of Chicago. 
Fleeing before it was a crowd of blear-eyed, 
drunken, and diseased wretches, male and 
female, half naked, ghastly, with painted 
cheeks, cursing and uttering ribald jests as 
they drifted along. 

I went tothe 77zbune office, ascended to the 
editorial rooms, took the only inflammable 
thing there, a kerosene lamp, and carried it to 
the basement, where I emptied the oil into the 
sewer. This was scarcely done when I per- 
ceived the flames breaking out of the roof of 
the Court-house, the old nucleus of which, in 
the centre of the edifice, was not constructed 
of fireproof material, as the new wings had 
been. As the flames had leaped a vacant 
space of nearly two hundred feet to get at this 
roof, it was evident that most of the business 
portion of the city must go down; but I did 
not reflect that the city Water Works, with 
their four great pumping engines, were in a 
straight line with the fire and wind. Nor did 

63 


Keminiscences of Chicago 





I know then that this priceless machinery was 
covered by a wooden roof. The flames were 
driving thither with demon precision. 


What happened at the 77zbune Building has 
already been told in your columns. We saw 
the tall buildings on the opposite sides of the 
two streets melt down in a few moments with- 
out scorching ours. The heat broke the plate- 
glass windows in the lower stories, but not in 
the upper ones. After the fire in our neigh- 
borhood had spent its force, the editorial and 
composing rooms did not even smell of smoke. 
Several of our brave fellows who had been up 
all night had gone to sleep on the lounges, 
while others were at the sink washing their 
faces, supposing that all danger to us had 
passed. So I supposed, and in this belief 
went home to breakfast. The smoke to the 
northward was so dense that we could not 
see the North Division, where sixty thousand 
people were flying in mortal terror before the 
flames. The immense store of Field, Leiter 
& Co. I observed to be under a shower of 
water from their own fire-apparatus, and since 
the First National Bank, a fireproof building, 
protected it on one corner, I concluded that 
the progress of the flames in that direction 
was stopped, as the Z7ibune Building had 
stopped it where we were. Here, at least, I 
thought was a saving of twenty millions of 


64 


DHorace White 


property, including the Great Central Depot 
and the two grain elevators adjoining, effected 
by two or three buildings which had been 
erected with a view to such an emergency. 
The Post-office and Custom-house building 
(also fireproof according to public rumor) had 
stopped the flames a little farther to the south- 
west, although the interior of that structure was 
burning. <A_ straight line drawn northeast 
from the Post-office would nearly touch the 
Tribune, First National Bank, Field, Leiter & 
Co.’s store, and the Illinois Central Railroad 
land department, another fireproof. Every- 
thing east of that line seemed perfectly safe, 
and with this feeling I went home to breakfast. 


With some little difficulty we reached our 
house, and in less time than we ever set out 
on a journey before, we dragged seven trunks, 
four bundles, four valises, two baskets, and 
one hamper of provisions into the street and 
piled them on the wagon. The fire was still 
more than a quarter of a mile distant, and 
the wind, which was increasing in violence, 
was driving it not exactly in our direction. 
The low wooden houses were nearly all gone, 
and after that the fire must make progress, 
if at all, against brick and stone. Several 
churches of massive architecture were between 
us and harm, and the great Palmer House had 
not been reached, and might not be if the fire- 

65 





Kemimiscences of Chicago 


men, who had now got their hose into the 
lake, could work efficiently in the ever-increas- 
ing jam of fugitives. 

My wife thought we should have time to 
take another load; my brother thought so; we 
all thought so. We had not given due credit 
either to the savage strength of the fire or the 
firm pack on Michigan Avenue. Leaving my 
brother to get the family safely out if I did not 
return in time, and to pile the most valuable 
portion of my library into the drawers and 
bureaus and tables ready for moving, I seized 
a bird-cage containing a talented green parrot, 
and mounted the seat with the driver. For 
one square southward from the corner of 
Monroe Street we made pretty fair progress. 
The dust was so thick that we could not see 
the distance of a whole square ahead. It 
came, not in clouds, but in a steady storm of 
sand, the particles impinging against our faces 
like needle-points. Pretty soon we came to a 
dead halt. We could move neither forward, 
nor backward, nor sidewise. The gorge had 
caught fast somewhere. Yet everybody was 
good-natured and polite. If I should say I 
didn’t hear an oath all the way down Michigan 
Avenue, there are probably some mule-drivers 
in Cincinnati who would say it was a lie. But 
I did not. The only quarrelsome person I 
saw was a German laborer (a noted exception 
to his race), who was protesting that he had 
lost everything, and that he would not get out 

66 


Dorace White 


of the middle of the road although he was on 
foot. He became very obstreperous on this 
point, and commenced beating the head of my 
horse with his fist. My driver was preparing 
to knock him down with the butt-end of his 
whip, when two men seized the insolent Teuton 
and dragged him to the water’s edge, where it 
is to be hoped he was ducked. 


By getting into the park, we succeeded in 
advancing two squares without impediment, 
and might have gone farther had we not come 
upon an excavation which the public authorities 
had recently made. This drove us back to the 
Avenue, where another battering-ram made a 
gap for us at the intersection of Van Buren 
Street, the north end of Michigan Terrace. 
Here the gorge seemed impassable. The diffi- 
culty proceeded from teams entering Michigan 
Avenue from cross-streets. Extempore police- 
men stationed themselves at the crossings, and 
helped as well as they could, but we were half 
an hour in passing the Terrace. From this im- 
posing row of residences the millionaires were 
dragging their trunks and their bundles, and 
yet there was no panic, no frenzy, no boister- 
ousness, but only the haste which the situation 
authorized. 

There was real danger to life all along the 
street, but nobody realized it, because the park 
was ample to hold all the people. None of us 


67 


Keminiscences of Chicago 


asked or thought what would become of those 
nearest the water if the smoke, and cinders 
should drive the whole crowd down to the 
shore, or if the vast bazaar of luggage should 
itself take fire, as some of it afterwards did. 
Fortunately for those in the street, there was 
a limit to the number of teams available in 
that quarter of the city. The contributions 
from the cross-streets grew less; and we soon 
began to move on a walk without interruption. 
Arriving at Eldridge Court, I turned into 
Wabash Avenue, where the crowd was thinner. 
Arriving at the house of a friend, who was on 
the windward side of the fire, I tumbled off 
my load and started back to get another. 
Half way down Michigan Avenue, which 
was now perceptibly easier to move in, I dis- 
covered my family on the sidewalk, with their 
arms full of light household effects. My wife 
told me that the house was already burned, 
that the flames burst out ready-made in the 
rear hall before she knew that the roof had 
been scorched, and that one of the servants, 
who had disobeyed orders in her eagerness to 
save some article, had got singed, though not 
burned, in coming out. My wife and mother, 
and all the rest were begrimed with dirt and 
smoke, like blackamoors—everybody was. The 
‘‘bloated aristocrats ’’ all along the street, who 
supposed they had lost both home and fortune 
at one sweep, were a sorry but not des- 
pairing congregation. They had saved their 
68 


Horace White 


lives at all events, and they knew that many of 
their fellow-creatures must have lost theirs. 

I saw a great many kindly acts done as we 
moved along. The poor helped the rich, and 
the rich helped the poor (if anybody could be 
called rich at such a time) to get on with their 
loads. I heard of cartmen demanding one 
hundred and fifty dollars (in hand, of course) 
for carrying a single load. Very likely it was 
so, but those cases did not come under my own 
notice. It did come under my notice that some 
cartmen worked for whatever the sufferers felt 
able to pay, and one I knew worked with 
alacrity for nothing. It takes all sorts of 
people to make a great fire. 


I had paid and discharged my driver after 
extorting his solemn promise to come back and 
move me again if the wind should shift to the 
north— in which event everybody knew that the 
whole South Division, for a distance of four 
miles, must perish. We soon arrived at the 
house of the kind friend on Wabash Avenue, 
where our trunks and bundles had been de- 
posited. This was south of the line of fire, 
but this did not satisfy anybody, since we had 
all seen how resolutely the flames had gone 
transversely across the direction of the wind. 
Then came a story from down the street that 
Sheridan was going to blow up the Wabash 
Avenue Methodist Church on the corner of 


69 


Keminigcences of Chicago 


Harrison Street. We observed a general 
scattering away of people from that neighbor- 
hood. I was nearly four squares south of the 
locality, and thought that the missiles wouldn’t 
come so far. We awaited the explosion, but it 
did not come. By and by we picked up cour- 
age to go around two or three blocks and see 
whether the church had fallen down of its own 
accord. We perceived that two or three houses 
in the rear of the edifice had been leveled to 
the ground, that the church itself was standing, 
and that the fire was out, in that quarter at 
least; also, that the line of Harrison Street 
marked the southern limits of the devastation. 

The wind continued to blow fiercely from 
the southwest, and has not ceased to this hour 
(Saturday, October 14). But it was liable to 
change. If it chopped around to the north, 
the burning embers would be blown back upon 
the South Division. If it veered to the east, 
they would be blown into the West Division, 
though the river afforded rather better protec- 
tion there. Then we should have nothing to 
do but to keep ahead of the flames and get 
down as fast as possible to the open prairie, 
and there spend the night houseless and sup- 
perless—and what of the morrow? A full 
hundred thousand of us. And if we were 
spared, and the West Division were driven out 
upon their prairie (a hundred and fifty thousand 
according to the Federal census), how would 
the multitude be fed? If there could be any- 


70 


Horace White 


thing more awful than what we had already 
gone through, it would be what we would cer- 
tainly go through if the wind should change; 
for with the embers of this great fire flying 
about, and no water to fight them, we knew 
there was not gunpowder enough in Illinois to 
stop the inevitable conflagration. But this was 
not all. A well authenticated rumor came up 
to the city that the prairie was on fire south of 
Hyde Park, the largest of the southern suburbs. 

The grass was as dry as tinder, and so were 
the leaves in Cottage Grove, a piece of timber 
several miles square, containing hundreds of 
residences of the better class, some of them 
of palatial dimensions. Ai fire on the prairie, 
communicating itself to the grove, might cut 
off the retreat of the one hundred thousand 
people in the South Division; might invade 
the South Division itself, and come up under 
the impulsion of that fierce wind, and where 
should we all be then? There were three or 
four bridges leading to the West Division, the 
only possible avenues of escape—but what 
were these among so many? And what if 
the ‘‘Commune’’ should go to work and start. 
incendiary fires while all was yet in confusion? 
These fiends were improving the daylight by 
plundering along the street. Before dark the 
whole male population of the city was organ- 
ized by spontaneous impulse into a night 
patrol, with pallid determination to put every 
incendiary to instant death. 


71 


reminiscences of Chicage 


About 5 Pp. M. I applied to a friend on 
Wabash Avenue for the use of a team to con- 
vey my family and chattels to the southern 
suburbs, about four miles distant, where my 
brother happened to own a small cottage, 
which, up to the present time, nobody could 
be induced to occupy and pay rent for. My 
friend replied that his work-teams were en- 
gaged hauling water for people to drink. 
Here was another thing I had not thought of 
—a great city with no water to drink. Plenty 
in the lake, to be sure, but none in the city 
mains or the connecting pipes. Fortunately 
the extreme western limits were provided with 
a number of artesian wells, bored for man- 
ufacturing establishments. Then there was 
the river—the horrible, black, stinking river 
of a few weeks ago, which has since become 
clear enough for fish to live in, by reason of 
the deepening of the canal, which draws to 
the Mississippi a perpetual flow of pure water 
from Lake Michigan. With the city Pumping 
Works stopped, the sewers no longer discharged 
themselves into the river. So this might be 
used; and it was. Twenty-four hours had not 
passed before tens of thousands of people 
were drinking the water of Chicago River, 
with no unpleasant taste or effects. 

The work-teams of my friend being engaged 
in hauling water for people who could not get 
any from the wells or the river or lake, he 
placed at my disposal his carriage, horses, and 


72 





PHorace White 


coachman, whom he directed to take me and 
the ladies to any place we desired to reach. 
While we were talking, he hailed another 
gentleman on the street, who owned a large 
stevedore wagon, and asked him to convey 
my trunks, etc., to Cottage Grove Avenue, 
near Forty-third Street, to which request an 
immediate and most gracious assent was given. 
And thus we started again, our hostess press- 
ing a mattress upon us from her store. All 
the streets leading southward were yet filled 
with fugitives. Where they all found shelter 
that night, I know not; but every house 
seemed to be opened to anybody who desired 
to enter. 

Arrived at our home about dusk; we found 
in it, as we expected, a cold reception, there 
being neither stove nor grate, nor fireplace, nor 
fuel, nor light therein. But I will not dwell 
upon these things. We really did not mind 
them, for when we thought of the thousands 
of men, women, and tender babes huddled 
together in Lincoln Park, seven miles to the 
north of us, with no prospect of food, exposed 
to rain, if it should come, with no canopy but 
the driving smoke of their homes, we thought 
how little we had suffered and how much we 
should be thankful for. How one feels at a 
particular time depends much upon how he 
sees Others enjoy themselves. All the eight- 
hour strikers are possessed of more comfort 
and leisure than we have, but we do not notice 


73 


Keminiscences of Chicago 


anything of it at all. We have secured a 
stove, and there are plenty of trees around 
us, and the axe is mightier than the pen to get 
one’s breakfast ready now. 

The prairie fire southwest of Hyde Park we 
found to have been a veritable fact, but it had 
been put out by diligent effort. The ditches 
cut for drainage in that region during the last 
two or three years render it very difficult for a 
fire to spread far. Yet I revolved in my mind 
a plan of escape in case the fire should break 
out afresh, surmount the ditches, and get into 
the grove which surrounded us. I judged that 
a fire could be discerned from our window 
fully five miles away, and that before it could 
reach us we could get upon the new South 
Park Boulevard, two hundred feet wide, the 
western side of which has no timber to burn. 
A mere prairie fire coming up to this graveled 
driveway would go out, and we should suffer 
nothing worse than a little smoke. I learned 
the next day that some of the people on the 
lake shore east of us constructed rafts and 
gathered a few household effects in convenient 
places, to be launched whenever the fire 
should make its appearance on the prairie. It 
turned out, from the experience of the North 
Division groves, that these oak woods would 
not have burned in any case, the timber con- 
taining too much moisture. But we did not 
then know that. 

There was no sleep for us until we heard 


74 








Horace White 


the welcome sound of rain against our wit 


dows. How our hearts did rise in thankfu 
ness to heaven for that rain! We thought 


the poor people in Lincoln Park would rather Zs 


have the rain on their heads than know that 


Chicago was exposed to the horror of total al 


conflagration. The wind blew with increasing 
violence, till our frame house trembled in every 
rafter. We did not know but it would go 
over, yet if it would only rain we would stand 
our ground, for we had no furniture to be 
broken by an overturned house, or to break 
our bones rolling about the floor. Now and 
then we looked at the red sky to the north, and 
satisfied ourselves that the rest of Chicago 
was not burning. This gave us comfort, but 
not sleep. 

Details of what I saw might be spun out to 
the crack of doom, but I must draw it to a 
close. There will, of course, be much curios- 
ity, to know why the fireproof buildings suc- 
Speed. =’. 

It is ascertained that no stone ever used in 
the business part of a city is worth a farthing 
in such a fire. Brick is the only thing which 
comes out whole, and is ready to try it again. 
But it is not fair to say that an absolutely fire- 
proof building cannot be erected. I think it 
can be. At all events, the architects of the 
world should come here and study. 

And what shall I say of the Christ- like 
charity that has overwhelmed us in our mis- 


75 


Coot 


id 
ag? 


y o 


yok 
¥ 


Keminiscences of Chicaga 


fortune? All the tears that have been shed in 
Chicago, except those which have flowed for 
the dead and maimed, have been called to our 
eyes by reading that in this great city and that 
little town, and yonder hamlet, and across the 
lakes in Canada, and down among our late 
enemies of the South, and beyond the moun- 
tains in Utah and California, and over the 
water in England, and on the Continent, 
God’s people were working and giving to save 
us our affliction. JI cannot even write of it, 
for my eyes fill whenever I think of it. 

On Wednesday morning the 7rzbune came 
out with a half sheet containing among other 
things a notice that an intelligence office had 
been opened for lost people to report to, and 
for those who had lost their friends to inquire 
at. On the following morning we printed two 
columns of personal items from this intel- 
ligence office. Perhaps you have copied them, 
but I send you a few taken at random: 

‘ ibe Bush is at 40 Arnold Street. She lost her 
aby. 

Peter Grace lost wife and children; Church, Car- 
penter and Washington streets. 

Mrs. Tinney lost little girl six years old, Katie, 
Harrison House. 

James Glass lost little boy, Arthur Glass, 342 
Hubbard Street. 

A little girl, cannot speak her name, at Desplaines 
Hotel. 

The wife and child of Rev. W. A. Jones are 
missing. 

Henry Schneider, baby, in blue poland waist, red 
skirt, has white hair. 


76 


Horace White 


Many of these lost babies were doubtless 
found; many of these separated families 
brought together again. What meetings there 
must have been! But many others have gone 
over the river, to be found of God, and deliv- 
ered to their mothers’ arms in mansions not 
made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 


77 


William Bross’ 


[Dictated to a reporter of Zhe New York Tribune 
by Mr. Bross upon his arrival from Chicago at 
the St. Nicholas Hotel, New York, and 
printed in Zhe New York Tribune of 
October 14, 1871.] 


BOUT two o’clock on Monday morning 

my family and I were aroused by Mrs. 
Samuel Bowles, wife of the editor and 
proprietor of Zhe Springfield Republican, who 
happened to be our guest. We had all gone 
to bed very tired the night before, and had 
slept so soundly that we were unaware of the 
conflagration till it had assumed terrible force. 
My family were very much alarmed at the 
glare which illuminated the sky and the lake. 
I saw that a dreadful disaster was impending 
over Chicago, and immediately left the house 
to determine the locality and extent of the 
fire. I found that it was then a good deal 
south of my house, and west of the Michigan 
Southern and Rock Island railroad depots. 
I went home considerably reassured in half 
an hour, and finding my family packing told 
them that I did not anticipate danger, and re- 
1William Bross, ex-Lieutenant-Governor of IIli- 


nois, was, together with Joseph Medill and Mr. White, 
publisher of Zhe Chicago Tribune. 


78 


William Wross 


quested them to leave it off. But I said, ‘‘ The 
result of this night’s work will be awful. At 
least ten thousand people will want breakfast 
in the morning; you prepare breakfast for one 
hundred’’; this they proceeded to do, but soon 
became alarmed and re-commenced packing. 
Soon after half-past two o’clock I started for 
the Zribune office, to see if it was in danger. 
By this time the fire had crossed the south 
branch of the river, and that portion of the 
city south of Harrison Street, between Third 
Avenue and the river, seemed a blaze of fire. 

I reached the 7rzbune office, and, seeing no 
cause for apprehension, did not remain there 
more than twenty minutes. On leaving the 
office I proceeded to the Nevada Hotel (which 
is my property), corner of Washington and 
Franklin streets, I remained there for an hour, 
watching the progress of the flames, and con- 
templating the destruction going on around. 
The fire had passed east of the hotel, and I 
hoped that the building was safe; but it soon 
began to extend in a westerly direction, and 
the hotel was quickly enveloped in flames. I 
became seriously alarmed, and ran north on 
Franklin Street to Randolph, so as to head off 
the flames and get back to my house, which 
was on Michigan Avenue, on the shore of the 
lake. My house was a part of almost the last 
block burned [in Terrace Row}]. 


1Terrace Row was situated between Van Buren 
and Congress streets. 


79 


reminiscences of Chicago 


At this time the fire was the most grandly 
magnificent scene that one can conceive. The 
Court-house, Post-office, Farwell Hall, Tre- 
mont House, Sherman House, and all the splen- 
did buildings on La Salle and Wells streets 
were burning with a sublimity of effect which 
awed me; all the adjectives in the language 
would fail to convey the intensity of its won- 
ders. Crowds of men, women, and children 
were huddling away, running first in one di- 
rection, then in another, shouting and crying 
in their terror, and trying to save anything 
they could lay their hands on, no matter how 
trivial in value; while every now and then explo- 
sions, which seemed almost to shake the solid 
earth, would reverberate through the air and 
add to the terrors of the poor people. 

I crossed Lake Street bridge to the west, ran 
north to Kinzie Street bridge, and crossed over 
east to the North Side, hoping to head off the 
fire. It had, however, already swept north of 
me, and was traveling faster than I could go, 
and I soon came to the conclusion that it would 
be impossible for me to get east in that direc- 
tion. I accordingly re-crossed Kinzie Street 
bridge, and went west as far as Des Plaines 
Street, where I fortunately met a gentleman 
in a buggy, who very kindly drove me over 
Twelfth Street bridge, to my house on Michi- 
gan Avenue. It was by this time getting on 
toward five o’clock, and the day was beginning 
to break. On my arrival home I found my 

80 





William Wross 


horses already harnessed, and my riding horse 
saddled for me. My family and friends were 
busily engaged in packing, and in distributing 
sandwiches and coffee to all who wanted them, 
or could spare a minute to partake of them. 

I immediately jumped on my horse, and 
rode as fast as I could to the 77zbune office. 
I found everything safe; the men were all there, 
and we fondly hoped that all danger was past 
as far as we were concerned—and for this 
reason: the blocks in front of the Z7rzbune 
Building on Dearborn Street, and north on 
Madison Street, had both been burned, the 
only damage accruing to us being confined to 
a cracking of some of the plate-glass windows 
from the heat. But a somewhat curious 
incident soon set us all in a state of excitement. 
The fire had, unknown to us, crawled under 
the sidewalk from the wooden pavement and 
caught the woodwork of the barber’s shop 
which comprised a portion of our basement. 
As soon as we ascertained the extent of the 
mischief, we no longer apprehended any special 
danger, believing, as we did, that the building 
was fireproof. 

My associates, Mr. Medill and Mr. White, 
were present, and, with the help of some of 
our employees we went to work with water and 
one of Babcock’s fire-extinguishers. The fire 
was soon put out, and we once more returned 
to business. The forms had been sent down- 
stairs, and I ordered our foreman, Mr. Kahler, 

81 


Keminiscences of Chicago 


to get all the pressmen together, in order to 
issue the paper as soon as a paragraph showing 
how far the fire had then extended could be 
prepared and inserted. Many kind friends 
gathered around the office and warmly ex- 
pressed their gratification at the preservation 
of our building. 

Believing all things safe, I again mounted my 
horse and rode south on State Street to see 
what progress the fire was making, and if it were 
moving eastward on Dearborn Street. Tomy 
great surprise and horror I found that its cur- 
rent had taken an easterly direction, nearly as 
far as State Street, and that it was also ad- 
vancing in a northerly direction with terrible 
swiftness and power. I saw the danger so 
imminently threatening us, and with some 
friends endeavored to obtain a quantity of 
powder for the purpose of blowing up build- 
ings south of the Palmer House. Failing in 
finding any powder, I saw the only thing to do 
was to tear them down. 

I proceeded to Church’s hardware store, 
procured about a dozen heavy axes, and hand- 
ing them to my friends, requested them to 
mount the buildings with me and literally chop 
them down. All but two or three seemed 
utterly paralyzed at this unexpected change in 
the course of the fire; and even these, seeing 
the others stand back, were unwilling to make 
the effort alone. At this moment I saw that 
some wooden buildings and a new brick house 

82 


William Wrogs 


west of the Palmer House had already caught 
fire. I knew at a glance that the 77ribune 
Building was doomed, and I rode back to the 
office and told them that nothing more could 
be done to save the building, McVicker’s 
Theatre, or anything else in that vicinity. In 
this hopeless frame of mind I rode home to 
look after my residence and family, intently 
watching the ominous eastward movement of 
the flames. I set to work, with my family and 
friends, to move as much of my furniture as 
possible across the narrow park east of Michi- 
gan Avenue, onto the shore of the lake, a 
distance of some three hundred feet. 

Following out the idea that each citizen 
should give the incidents happening to himself 
or under his own observation, I mention that 
never did friends toil more loyally than ours 
did for us. They saved most of our books, 
furniture, pictures, etc., that were left to us. 
Some that were not friends helped themselves 
to whatever struck their fancy when opportunity 
offered. 

My coachman filled my buggy with some 
harness, a bag of coffee, and other articles, 
and left it with his friends on the lake shore. 
Someone coming along and finding it was my 
‘«plunder,’’ said he knew me; would put some 
more goods in it to take home, and return 
the buggy to me. That was the last I ever 
heard of the buggy or anything that was in 
it. My daughter supposed that I had hired 

83 


Reminiscences of Chicage 


an express wagon that stood at the door, and 
I supposed that she had. We filled it full of 
goods and furniture; among other things, a 
valuable picture—a farm and animal scene — 
by Herring, the great English painter. The 
driver slipped off in the crowd, and that was 
the last we heard of that picture or any part 
of the load. I met a man at my door looking 
decidedly corpulent. ‘‘My friend,’’ said I, 
‘you have on a considerable invoice of my 
clothes, with the hunting suit outside. Well, 
go along, you might as well have them as to 
let them burn.’’ These were slight affairs 
compared with what many others suffered by © 
the thieving crowd. 

I sent my family to the house of some friends 
in the south part of the city for safety; my 
daughter, Miss Jessie Bross, was the last to 
leave us. 

The work of carrying the furniture across 
the Avenue to the shore was most difficult and 
dangerous. For six or eight hours Michigan 
Avenue was jammed with every description of 
vehicle, containing families escaping from the 
city, or baggage wagons laden with goods and 
furniture. The sidewalks were crowded with 
men, women, and children, all carrying some- 
thing. Some of the things saved and carried 
away were valueless. One woman carrying 
an empty bird cage; another, an old work- 
box; another, some dirty, empty baskets. 
Old, useless bedding, anything that could be 


84 


William Wross 


hurriedly snatched up, seemed to have been 
carried away without judgment or forethought. 

In the meantime the fire had lapped up the 
Palmer House, the theatres, and the 77rzbune 
Building; and contrary to our expectations, for 
we thought the current of fire had passed my 
residence, judging from the direction of the 
wind, we saw, by the advancing clouds of dense 
black smoke and rapidly approaching flames, 
that we were in imminent peril. 

The fire had already worked so far south 
and east as to attack the stables in the rear 
of Terrace Row, between Van Buren and 
Congress streets. Many friends rushed into 
the houses in the block, and helped to carry 
out heavy furniture, such as pianos and book- 
cases. We succeeded in carrying the bulk of 
it to the shore. There I sat with a few others 
by our household goods, calmly awaiting the 
destruction of our property—one of the most 
splendid blocks in Chicago. The eleven fine 
houses, which composed the block, were occu- 
pied by Denton Gurney, Peter L. Yoe, Mrs. 
Humphreys (owned by Mrs. Walker), William 
Bross, P. F. W. Peck, S. C. Griggs, Tuthill 
King, Judge H. T. Dickey, Isaac Cook, 
John L. Clark, and the Hon. J. Y. Scammon. 

Having got out all we could about II A.M. 
of Monday, the 9th, I sat down by my goods, 
which were piled up indiscriminately on the 
lake shore. Soon I saw the angry flame burst- 
ing from my home. Quickly and grandly they 

85 


Keminiscences of Chicago 


wrapped up the whole block, and away it 
floated in black clouds over Lake Michigan. 

Early in the afternoon we began to send our 
goods south by teams, and by sundown all that 
we had been able to save was distributed 
among friends south of Twelfth Street. In 
the evening my little family of three came 
together at the house of E. L. Jansen, No. 
607° Wabash Avenue, Mrs. Bross’s brother, 
where we remained until most kindly received 
by Dr. Edmund Andrews and family. There 
was very little sleep that (Monday) night, for 
everybody was in mortal fear that what 
remained of the city would be burned by the 
desperados who were known to be prowling 
about everywhere. 

The next morning I was out early, and found 
the streets thronged with people moving in all 
directions. Tome the sight of the ruin, though 
so sad, was wonderful—giving one a most 
peculiar sensation, as it was wrought in so 
short a space of time. It was the destruction 
of the entire business portion of one of the 
greatest cities in the world! Every bank and 
insurance office, law offices, hotels, theatres, 
railroad depots, most of the churches, and 
many of the principal residences of the city, a 
charred mass—property almost beyond esti- 
mate gone. 

Mr. White, like myself, had been burned out 
of house and home. He had removed with 
his family to a place of safety, and I had no 

86 


William Wross. 


idea where he or anyone else connected with 
the 7ribune office might be found. My first 
point to make was naturally the site of our late 
office; but, before I reached it, I met two 
former tenants of our building, who told me 
that there was a job printing-office on Ran- 
dolph Street, on the West Side, that could 
probably be bought. I immediately started for 
the West Side, and, while making my way 
through the crowd over the Madison Street 
bridge, desolation stared me in the face at 
every step, and yet I was much struck with 
the tone and temper of the people. On all 
sides I saw evidences of true Chicago spirit, 
and men said to one another, ‘‘Cheer up; we’ll 
be all right again before long,’’ and many other 
plucky things. Their courage was wonderful. 
Everyone was bright, cheerful, pleasant, and 
even inclined to be jolly, in spite of the misery 
and destitution which surrounded them, and 
which they shared. One and all said, ‘‘ Chi- 
cago must and shall be rebuilt at once.”’ 

On reaching Canal Street, on my way to 
purchase the printing-office I had heard of, I 
was informed that while Mr. White and I were 
saving our families, on Monday afternoon, Mr. 
Medill, seeing that the Z7zbune office must 
inevitably be burned, had sought for and pur- 
chased Edward’s job printing-office, No. 15 
Canal Street, where he was then busy organiz- 
ing things. When I arrived there I found Mr. 
Medill in the upper stories among the types 


87 


Keminiscences of Chicago 


and printers, doing all he could to get ready 
to issue a paper in the morning. I saw ata 
glance that my work was below. The base- 
ment and main floor were filled with boards and 
boxes and rubbish, and these must be cleaned 
out at once. I placed a gang of men, under 
the command of our cashier, to clear out the 
main floor, and another gang, under a boss, 
to clear out the basement to receive a load of 
paper. I then went foraging for brooms, but 
the market was bare of the article, and I bor- 
rowed some of a neighbor. 

Seeing that business was going on lively, my 
next duty was to get up four stoves. For these 
I started west on Randolph Street, but every 
store had sold out, till I got to the corner of 
Halsted Street. I found here the four I 
wanted—price, $16 each; told the owner I 
wanted all his men to go to work at once to get 
the pipe ready; but fearing if he did not know 
who had bought them, somebody with cash in. 
hand might ‘‘jump my claim,’’ I told him they 
were for the Z7zbune Company; that we had 
plenty of money in our vault and in the bank, 
and as soon as we could get at it he should 
have his pay. ‘‘I don’t know about dat,’’ 
said the worthy Teuton; ‘‘I guess I must have 
de money for dem stoves.’’ 

The thing amused me at the rapid change the 
fire had wrought. On Saturday our note would 
have been good for $100,000, and on Tuesday 
we could not buy four stoves and the fixtures on 

88 


William Wross 


credit. Inthebest of humor, I told himto come 
with me and measure the height of the holes for 
the pipe in the chimneys, and before he could 
get the articles ready he should have his money. 
This he did; and then my first question, half 
joke, half earnest, to every friend I met was, 
‘« Have you got any money?’’ Thetenth man, 
perhaps, Honorable Edward Cowles, of Cleve- 
land, Ohio, said, ‘‘Yes, how much do you 
want?’’ ‘‘All you can spare’’; and he handed 
me $60. Not enough for the stove genius; 
but I walked rapidly to his den, shook the 
greenbacks at him, and told him to hurry up, 
for I’d soon have the balance; came back to 
our office and found a dozen or more of our 
leading citizens, all ‘‘strapped,’’ like myself, 
till at last E. S. Wadsworth, Esq., handed me 
$100. Messrs. Cowles and Wadsworth, there- 
fore, furnished. the cash capital to start the 
Tribune the next day after the fire. But 
money soon began to flow in. 

Between three and four o’clock, our clerk, 
Mr. Lowell, came to me and said, ‘‘ There are 
some people here with advertisements for lost 
friends.’’ I said, ‘‘ Take them and the cash, 
registering in your memorandum book’’; and 
upon a dirty old box on the window-sill for a 
desk, the 77zbune at once commenced doing a 
lively business. A gentleman called me by 
name and said, ‘‘I haven’t a morsel of food 
for my wife and children to-night, and not a 
cent to buy any; may I paint ‘772bune’ over 


89 


Keminiscences of Chicago 


your door?’’ It was soon done—bill, $3.75. 
And thus a family was provided for that night 
at least, and another citizen started up in busi- 
ness. 

By 4 P.M. the stoves were up; Mr. White 
was duly installed with the editors in the rear 
of the main floor; the clerks were taking ad- 
vertisements; the paper was soon after going 
into the basement; arrangements were made to 
print on the /ournal press, our next door 
neighbor. Mr. Medill had his printers all in 
order; and a council was called, a list of ma- 
terials made out, and it was agreed that I 
should start for Buffalo and New York that 
evening to get them. I hurried home, got my 
satchel— alas, clean linen was not to be had— 
and back to the office. 

About eight, I took the middle of Canal 
Street, and went south to Twelfth, thence east 
to Clark, and thence south to Sixteenth, and 
just saw the cars moving away. Nothing was 
to be done but to return to 607 Wabash Avenue. 
I have mentioned my route thus particularly, 
to add that this was one of the most lonely and 
fearful tramps of my life. No street lamps, 
few people in the streets, and there were good 
reasons to give them as wide a berth as pos- 
sible. 

Another sleepless night; and in the morning 
as I sat sipping my coffee over some cold ham, 
I saw Sheridan’s boys, with knapsack and 
musket, march proudly by. Vever did deeper 


go 


William Wross 


emotions of joy overcome me. Thank God, 
those most dear to me, and the city as well, 
are safe; and I hurried away to the train. 
fad tt not been for General Sheridan’s prompt, 
bold, and patriotic action,'I verily believe what 
was left of the city would have been nearly, if 
not quite entirely, destroyed by the cutthroats 
and vagabonds who flocked here like vultures 
from every point of the compass. 


1The ‘‘boys in blue,’? whom General Sheridan 
telegraphed for, were companies of the 5th United 
States Infantry, then commanded by Colonel Nelson 
A. Miles—later Brigadier-General— and stationed 
at Fort Leavenworth. Immediately on receipt of 
the dispatch the companies were placed on the cars 
and rushed through to Chicago. Governor Bross 
was not the only citizen who, in that fearful time, 
thanked God when the solid mass of bluecoats and 
glittering muskets represented the barrier to the 
mob that these companies did—giving definite 
assurance of the might of the law in every gun and 
in every soldier.—Axndreas’s History of Chicago. 


gl 


Lambert Cree? 


[Transcript of a manuscript in the possession of 
The Chicago Historical Society.] 


Y residence at the time of the fire was at 
No. 282 Ohio Street, on the south side 
of the street, between Cass and State 
streets. The members of my household con- 
sisted, at the time, of my wife, my son Arthur, 
then eight years of age, my father, aman seventy 
years old, and my sister Ellen, and servants. 
We retired at about ten o’clock Sunday even- 
ing. At twelve o’clock I was awakened by my 
wife, who told me that a large fire seemed to 
be raging in the South Division, and, on going 
to a window in the rear of the house, I found a 
very serious conflagration was in progress in the 
direction of my office, which was at the corner 
of La Salle and Randolph streets. I hastily 
dressed and hurried across the river. 

When I arrived at the building where my 
office was located, the roof and cupola of the 
Court-house were already beginning to burn; 
several other buildings south and west of the 


1Lambert Tree was Judge of the Circuit Court of 
Cook County from 1870 to 1875, and during Cleve- 
land’s administration was Minister to Belgium and 
later Minister to Russia. 


Q2 


Hambert Cree 


Court-house were in flames, and the air was full 
of sparks, cinders, and pieces of flaming felt 
torn from the roofs of the houses, and being 
carried in a northeasterly direction by the wind, 
which was blowing a gale. 

I went upstairs to my office, which was so 
light from the burning buildings in the neigh- 
borhood that I found it unnecessary to turn on 
the gas. Unlocking the safe, I took out as 
many papers and other things that I deemed 
valuable as I could stow in the pockets of my 
overcoat and a small tin box, and then, locking 
it again, I started for home. 

My route on my return was down Randolph 
to Clark, up that street to Lake, along Lake to 
State, across State Street bridge, and thence 
on North State until I reached Ohio Street. 
When I got out of doors I found it literally 
raining fire. Along Randolph and Clark 
streets canvas awnings in front of many of the 
stores, and in several instances the large 
wooden signs, also, were burning. Here and 
there where the sparks had found a lodgment 
small jets of flames were darting out from 
wooden cornices on the tops of buildings, while 
the sparks and cinders which were constantly 
falling upon the streets were being whirled 
around in little eddies and scattered down the 
basement stairways. 

As I crossed State Street bridge, I observed 
an occasional plank burning in the wooden foot- 
ways of the bridge. Along North State and 


93 


Keminiscences of Chicaga 





Ohio streets, the dead leaves which the wind 
had from time to time caught up and deposited 
against and under the wooden sidewalks had 
been ignited in many places by the flying 
sparks, which had in turn set fire to the side- 
walks, so that every few yards tongues of fire 
were starting up between the cracks in the 
boards. Up to the time of reaching home, 
however, I could not discover that any house 
was on fire on the North Side. 

As soon as I reached my home I directed 
everybody to dress, and prepare to leave if 
necessary. I then went to the rear of the 
house, and on looking out of the window, 
observed that the railroad depot and Wright’s 
livery stable, near the north end of State 
Street bridge, were burning. When I passed 
there less than ten minutes afterward, the little 
wooden cottage on the west of me was in flames. 
This cottage was four blocks north of Wright’s 
livery stable, and, as far as I could discover, 
there were no buildings intervening between 
these two points which had yet taken fire; but 
it was one of the characteristic features of the 
conflagration that isolated buildings wouldcatch 
fire several blocks in advance of the main body 
of the flames from the flying sparks and 
cinders. 

I went upon the roof of my house, and 
ordered the servants to pass me up buckets 
of water as fast as they could, thinking that if 
I wet the roof thoroughly that would at least 


94 


BPQambert Cree 


be a safeguard. Ina few moments, however, 
I became convinced that no amount of water 
that I could command would save us. 

The sparks and flaming felt were now flying 
as thickly on the North Side as I had, a short 
time before, observed them in the South 
Division. The size of some of this burning 
material hurled through the air seems quite 
incredible. While on the roof of my house, 
a burning mass, which was fully as large as an 
ordinary bed-pillow, passed over my head. It 
fell upon the street, and on descending I had 
the curiosity to examine it, and found it to bea 
mass of matted hay. There were also pieces 
of burning felt, some of which I should say - 
were fully a foot square, flying through the air, 
and dropping upon the roofs of houses and 
barns. 

By this time (which was. about half-past 
two o’clock ‘in the morning), a great many 
affrighted men, women, and children began to 
appear in the streets, hurrying along, carrying 
large bundles in their arms and upon their 
backs, or dragging trunks and boxes. Many 
of the neighbors were depositing trunks, pic- 
tures, and other things which they could most 
readily remove, into the grounds of H. H. 
Magie, on the opposite side of the street, it 
being supposed that a space so remote from 
buildings must be safe. 

Two of our servants, catching the general 
infection to flee, dragged their trunks down- 


95 


Keminiscences of Chicago 


stairs, and disappeared in the street. It began 
to be apparent to the rest of us that we also 
must seek a safer place. The burning cottage 
on the west of us, which was now enveloped 
in flames, and one or two barns on our premises, 
which had just taken fire, admonished us that 
our turn would sooncome. It was, therefore, 
determined that we should cross the street and 
join Mr. and Mrs. Magie at their house, where 
we could await the further progress of events. 

It was now nearly three o’clock, I should 
think. The ladies put on their bonnets, and 
my wife, carrying a tin box containing her 
jewelry and some other valuables, led the way, 
accompanied by my little son Arthur, my father 
and sister, and a faithful French girl, who 
remained with us through our subsequent ad- 
ventures that night, and, by her coolness and 
nerve, proved most serviceable. I remained 
behind a few minutes to secure a trunk con- 
taining the family silver, and, as I dragged it 
through the hall, I also thought I would savea 
portrait of my son, which was hanging in the 
parlor. Accordingly Istepped in, cut thecords 
by which it was suspended, and carried it in one 
hand, while I drew the trunk across the street 
with the other. When half-way across the 
street, I turned and saw that we had left the 
house with a full head of gas turned on in all 
the rooms. It was hard to realize that we had 
left it for the last time. 

When I reached Mr. Magie’s garden, follows 


96 


HPambert Cree 


ing the example of neighbors, I deposited my 
picture under a large tree, and it was the last I 
ever saw of it. The trunk containing the silver 
met a better fate. Not knowing exactly what 
to do with it, I delivered it to Mr. Magie’s 
gardener, old Matthew, whom I happened to 
run across, with directions to bury it. He 
obeyed my instructions, as I found out the next 
morning; and this was the only property saved 
by the whole family. 

I entered Mr. Magie’s house by the back 
door; and as I was approaching it I saw that 
his stable, which was back on Ontario Street, 
was in flames. I found the family all assem- 
bled in the library, together with the mother of 
Mrs. Sylvester S. Bliss, one of our neighbors, 
who having become in some way separated 
from her own family, had, like ourselves, taken 
refuge in Mr. Magie’s house. We had been 
there only a few moments, when, on looking 
out of the window I discovered that the covered 
wooden porch which was stretched across the 
whole width of Mr. Magie’s house was on fire, 
and urged that we should immediately depart, 
as it was dangerous to remain a moment 
longer. All agreed to this, and we started to 
leave—my wife, my son, and myself leading 
the way. 

We had scarcely got out of the door before 
we were assailed by a hurricane of smoke, 
sparks, and cinders, which nearly blinded and 
suffocated us. Fearing separation, I grasped 


97 


Fieminigcences of Chicago 


my wife by one hand and my son by the other, 
and moved around to the west side of the 
house, intending to pass through one of the 
gates on Ohio Street; but we had no sooner 
got from under the protection which the north 
wall of the house afforded us, than we met the 
full force of this hurricane of smoke and fire. 
My wife’s and sister’s bonnets and my father’s 
and son’s hats were immediately blown from 
their heads, while the cinders were falling upon 
heads, hands, and faces, and burning them. 
It was impossible to get to the gate on Ohio 
Street before being suffocated, and we instinc- 
tively turned and ran towards the northeast 
corner of the block, thus turning our backs to 
the smoke. 

I now observed that the paling fence, six 
feet high, which surrounded the block, as well 
as the wooden sidewalks on the outside of it, 
were on fire in many places, and that a great 
number of bushes, shrubs, and plants, and 
several of the trees in the grounds were burn- 
ing. As we moved along, to add to the em- 
barrassment of the situation, my wife and sister 
both showed signs of fainting, and the French 
girl now had the other arm of my wife, assist- 
ing her along. 

Here I must record a circumstance which 
seemed almost providential at the time. 
There was no gate at the northeast corner of 
the block. We were simply driven in that 
direction by the storm of fire and smoke, 


98 


HPambert Cree 


because we could go in no other, I was, there- 
fore, feeling very anxious about what we 
should be able to do after arriving at the fence, 
when, as we got within a few steps of it, about 
twenty feet of the fence fell over upon the 
sidewalk, and made a passageway for us. 
This was undoubtedly caused by the posts hav- 
ing been burned away in part near the ground, 
and the fury of the storm against the fence 
with its weakened supports. The fence fell 
upon the sidewalk, which was in full blaze, and 
thus we passed overit. The skirt of my wife’s 
dress took fire as we went through the flames, 
and I tore it off. 

When we had reached the street and counted 
our party we found to our horror, that neither 
Mr. nor Mrs. Magie were with us. It seemed, 
as we afterward learned, that instead of fol- 
lowing us, as we had supposed when we all 
started from the house, they lingered behind 
for a few moments, and thus got separated 
from us. It was as impossible to go back then 
as it would have been to have crossed a sea of 
fire, and there was nothing to do but to con- 
tinue our flight. 

Our party, as we stood at the corner of Cass 
and Ontario streets, consisted of those I have 
mentioned already as having left my house to go 
to Mr. Magie’s, with the addition of the mother 
of Mrs. Bliss. I also discovered, when we 
reached the street, that my wife, in her fright, 
had thrown away, in the grounds, the box which 


99 


Keminigseences of Chicago 





contained her jewelry and other valuables. It 
was too late to go back for it. My wife, sister, 
son, and the mother of Mrs. Bliss were all 
slightly burned about their heads, hands, and 
faces, and the clothes of all of us had numerous 
holes burned in them. My wife, sister, and 
son were also hatless. Beyond this we were 
all right; and we hastened eastward along 
Ontario Street, doubly oppressed by the feel- 
ing of uncertainty which now weighed upon us 
all as to the fate of Mr. and Mrs. Magie. 
Looking behind me, everything was enveloped 
in clouds of smoke and sparks, and here and 
there a neighbor’s house was in flames. 

We continued along Ontario Street until we 
struck the vacant grounds on the shore of the 
lake. These grounds then occupied a space. 
from St. Clair Street to the lake, and from 
Superior to about Indiana or Illinois Street, 
covering many acres—perhaps forty or fifty. 

On the north were Lill’s brewery and the 
Water Works, running to the water’s edge, 
and preventing any advance beyond Superior 
Street in that direction, especially as both of 
these buildings were then on fire; on the south 
were one or two planing-mills and numerous 
lumber-yards extending to the river. When 
we arrived on the lake shore we found thousands 
of men, women, and children, and hundreds of 
horses and dogs, who had already fled there 
for refuge. The grounds were dotted all over 
at short intervals with piles of trunks, chairs, 

100 


Lambert Cree 


tables, beds, and household furniture of every 
description. It seemed as if this great open 
space, with nothing but the broad lake on the 
east of us, ought to be safe; and yet there, a 
few hours later, and for the second time that 
morning, we nearly perished from suffocation. 

It was between three and four o’clock when 
we arrived on the grounds. We stood among 
the crowd, watching the fire as it advanced 
and gradually encircled us, until the whole 
city in every direction, looking north, west, 
and south, was a mass of smoke and flames. 
The crowd itself was a study. In some in- 
stances whole families were huddled around 
their little piles of furniture, which was all 
they had left that morning of their yesterday’s 
home. Here and there a mother sat upon 
the ground clinging to her infant, with one or 
more little ones, who, exhausted by the pro- 
longed interruptions to their slumbers, were 
now sleeping, with their heads reclining on 
her lap, as peacefully as if nothing unusual 
was transpiring. Several invalids lay help- 
lessly stretched upon mattresses, but still 
surrounded by relatives and friends, who were 
endeavoring to soothe their fears. One young 
girl sat near me, with a cage containing a canary 
bird in her lap, whose life she was seeking to 
protect. She had covered the cage with her 
shawl, and from time to time raised it to see 
if the bird was all right. An hour or two 
later, while she was moving to a place of 

101 





Keminiscences of Chicago 





greater safety, I saw her little pet tumble from 
its perch to the bottom of the cage. It was 
dead; and the poor child, who doubtless had 
met her first sorrow, burst into tears. 

There was also something of that demoraliza- 
tion visible which, it is said, so often crops out 
when the good ship has struck upon a lee- 
shore and total shipwreck is inevitable. Some 
men and women who had found liquor among 
the household stores there, and who sought to 
drown their present woes in the bottle, were 
now reeling about, drunk; while in several 
other instances rough-looking men were going 
around breaking open and rifling trunks and 
boxes. 

Judges of courts and police officers were 
there, but they only formed so many units 
in that stricken assemblage, and their author- 
ity that morning was no greater than that 
of any other man upon the ground. A poor 
woman, extremely ill, who had been brought 
down on a mattress, died in the midst of a 
mixed crowd of men, women, and children; 
and, although the fact that she had died was 
understood in the vicinity of where she lay, it 
did not seem to excite the sensation of horror 
which one would ordinarily expect at the 
happening of an event like this, under such 
circumstances; on the contrary, a knowledge 
of the fact seemed to be received with com- 
parative indifference. Yet so solemn an inci- 
dent as the transition from life to death of a 

102 





Hambert Cree 


human being in the presence of the same 
people differently situated would doubtless 
have excited the profoundest sympathy and 
kindest attention to the friends who stood 
hovering around the body. That such an 
event could occur in the midst of such a class 
of persons and cause no greater attention than 
it did simply furnishes an illustration of the 
state of people’s minds, and the immediate 
danger in which they believed themselves to 
be standing that morning. 

The sparks and cinders were falling as fast 
and thick as hailstones in a storm; and soon 
after daylight, to our discomfort and danger, 
the piles of household stuff which covered the 
ground everywhere began to burn. Among 
this stuff were many feather beds and hair 
mattresses, and the heat and smoke became 
so intense that we were obliged, from time to 
time, to change our position to one nearer 
the water. 

An hour later, and the immense piles of 
lumber on the south of us were all afire, and 
then came the period of our greatest trial. 
Dense clouds of smoke and cinders rolled over 
and enveloped us, and it seemed almost im- 
possible to breathe. Man and beast alike 
rushed to the water’s edge, and into the water, 
to avoid suffocation. There was a mixed mass 
of human beings, horses, dogs, truck-wagons, 
and vehicles of all descriptions there. Some 
persons drove their horses into the lake as far 

103 


Reminiscences of Chicago 


as the poor beasts could safely go, and men, 
women, and children waded out and clambered 
upon the wagons to which the horses were 
attached, while the lake was lined with people 
who were standing in the water at various 
depths, from their knees to their waists, all 
with their backs to the storm of fire which 
raged behind them. 

We remained in this position several hours, 
until the lumber-yards were substantially de- 
stroyed, and the intensity of the heat and 
smoke had, in some measure, subsided. I 
then moved slowly with my family north along 
the water’s edge as far as the foot of Superior 
Street — which, indeed, was as far north as 
one could go on the lake shore, the burning 
ruins of Lill’s brewery and dock making a bar 
to further progress in that direction. 

At the foot of Superior Street there was a 
wooden one-story which had been erected for 
some manufacturing purpose, and which by 
some sort of miracle, had escaped the fire; and 
as we were all suffering intensely with our eyes, 
in consequence of the heat and smoke to which 
they had been subjected, we determined to 
enter the place. We found it already very 
much crowded with people, and, after trying 
it for a short time, concluded that the open 
air, even with the heat and smoke, could be 
no worse; and therefore came out and sought 
a position behind the north wall of Superior 
Street, which had been extended quite to 

104 


Hambert Cree 


the lake shore. My wife, being very much 
fatigued, took a seat on the ground, but had 
been there only a few moments when I dis- 
covered that her clothes were on fire. I im- 
mediately raised her, and succeeded in extin- 
guishing the fire with my hands. We became 
satisfied that the safest place was on our feet, 
moving around, and waiting patiently until re- 
lief should come. 

Between five and six o’clock in the after- 
noon I discovered a vehicle emerging from the 
smoke which still enveloped the city, although 
all the houses in this portion of it had already 
been destroyed. It was coming down Superior 
Street toward the lake, and I ran forward to 
meet it. It proved to be a covered one-horse 
grocery wagon; and I soon bargained with its 
driver to take as many as we could get into 
it, to the West Side, for ten dollars. Accord- 
ingly, my wife, son, father, sister, the mother 
of Mrs. Bliss, the French girl, and myself, and 
also Mr. and Mrs. Butterfield, their daughter 
Clara, and their son Justin, with his pet goat, 
which he had been carefully trying to shelter 
and protect through the day, all packed our- 
selves into the wagon and started for the West 
Side. The smoke was still so dense that we 
could see but little, and really had to grope 
our way along; but we saw enough to know 
that the North Side at least was destroyed, and 
that all that was left of the thousands of happy 
homes of the day before were a few chimney 

105 


Keminiscences of Chicaga 


stacks and an occasional broken and cracked 
wall. All the rest lay in the smoldering embers 
and tangled débris of the cellars. Our course 
was taken along Superior Street to Clark, 
down Clark to Kinzie, and across Kinzie Street 
bridge, which fortunately escaped the fire, to 
the West Side. 

When we arrived on the west side of the 
river, the driver asked me where we wanted to 
go. That question puzzled us all. We did 
not know,—anywhere, so that we could get a 
night’s shelter and something to eat. It was 
now seven o’clock, and the last time that any 
of my family had partaken of food was at our 
five o’clock dinner on the preceding evening, 
twenty-six hours before. The man drove us 
up Washington Street, and stopped in front 
of a house, which he said was a boarding- 
house. While descending from the wagon I 
was recognized by Mr. Charles Gray, who 
kindly invited my family, all he could accom- 
modate, to come to his house, which was in 
the immediate vicinity, and where we were 
most hospitably treated by him and his wife, 
and everything they could think of to make us 
comfortable was done for us. Mr. and Mrs. 
Butterfield and the rest found quarters at the 
boarding-house. 

That night was an extremely anxious one 
to all of us. Everyone felt nervous lest some 
change of wind might cause another conflagra- 
tion on the West Side; and as the supply of 

106 


Hambert Cree 


water was now entirely cut off, it could not be 
otherwise than disastrous. The streets were 
patrolled.by citizens, who had organized them 
into districts for the purpose; and I, although 
somewhat fatigued, walked the district in which 
we were staying the greater part of the night. 
So timid did everyone feel about fire, that 
smoking was prohibited on the streets; and it 
was one of the duties of the patrol to see that 
this regulation was carried out. An idea 
seemed also to prevail in the public mind that 
we stood in peril of incendiarism. I did not 
remove my clothes during the night. 

At daybreak, I hailed an express wagon, and 
drove over to the North Side, to see if I could 
find the trunk of silver which I had directed to 
be buried. When we reached the North Side, 
everything was the picture of desolation. Not 
a house remained to the north, south, or east 
of Wells Street as far as the eye could reach, 
save only that of Mahlon D. Ogden. The tel- 
egraph wires lay curled and tangled upon the 
streets, and here and there was a dead horse, 
cow, or animal of some kind, which had been 
overtaken by the fire, and perished. I saw 
that morning, however, but one dead human 
body, and that was on Dearborn between Ohio 
and Ontario streets. It was burned beyond 
recognition. 

When I reached Mr. Magie’s grounds, I 
found that old Matthew had faithfully executed 
my orders, and that the trunk and its contents 

107 


Keminiscences of Chicago 


were safe; and this was the only piece of per- 
sonal property which remained to us after the 
fire. I put it into the express wagon, and 
drove back to Mr. Gray’s house, where we all 
sat down to an excellent breakfast. 

I will now return to Mr. and Mrs. Magie. 
Their story, as related by themselves, is that 
instead of following us out of the house, as we 
supposed at the time, they remained a few 
moments to gather up a few keepsakes. That 
when they did come out, they encountered the 
same tornado which we had experienced, and 
were also driven back in their attempt to pass 
out of the gates on Ohio Street. They then, 
instead of going to the northeast corner of the 
block, as we had done, went to the northwest 
corner of it, where an immense elm tree stood, 
and which they thought would give them some 
shelter from the sparks and cinders which 
were falling upon and burning them terribly. 
After they had remained in this position for a 
short time, and when they supposed they were 
lost, they discovered a hole burned in the 
bottom of the fence on the State Street side, 
three or four feet long and two or three feet 
high, through which they crawled, and thus 
escaped into the street. They were by this 
time, however, badly burned upon their ears, 
noses, hands, and limbs. They made their 
way up State Street to Chicago Avenue, along 
that street to La Salle, and up the last street 
some distance, when a friendly door was 

108 


Pambert Eree 


thrown open to them. They had only been 
there a few hours, however, when the house 
in which they had taken refuge was threatened 
with destruction by the advancing fire, and 
they were obliged again to seek a place of 
safety. 

Following the crowd of fugitives northward 
as rapidly as their blistered limbs would per- 
mit, they reached North Avenue, along which 
they walked until they found themselves, late 
in the afternoon, on the western outskirts of 
the city, completely exhausted by fatigue and 
suffering. (It should be stated that Mr. and 
Mrs. Magie were both approaching seventy 
years of age at the time.) While standing 
upon the road, not knowing what to do, they 
were met by Dr. Gillett, a gentleman who had 
known Mr. Magie in former years and now 
recognized him. He kindly procured an ex- 
press wagon, the only conveyance which was 
to be had, and assisting Mr. and Mrs. Magie 
into it, drove them immediately to his own 
house; so that, in addition to a comfortable 
shelter that night, the burns of Mr. and Mrs. 
Magie, which had now become most painful, 
received immediate and skillful medical atten- 
tion from Dr. Gillett. 

Such was the total disorganization of the 
city immediately after the fire, that it was only 
after three days of the most diligent search that 
we were able to learn whether Mr. and Mrs. 
Magie were still alive, and of their whereabouts. 

109 


FKeminiscences of Chicago 


On finding them, we were all united under the 
hospitable roof of Mr. Stanford, where we re- 
mained a few days and until we could find a 
house to rent, which was no easy matter at 
that time. 

[The Haines H. Magie property was part of 
the Kinzie addition to Chicago, and remained 
in the original ownership of the Magie family, 
never being subdivided, but passing into the 
hands of Judge Tree through his wife, who 
was Miss Anna Magie. The brown stone Tree 
mansion stood there until the death of Judge 
Tree, and the site is now marked by the Medi- 
nah Temple and the Tree Studio Building. 


Ep.] 


IIo 


Arthur fa. BHinste! 


[From a manuscript in the possession of The 
Chicago Historical Society.] 


HAD been, for the last two years previous 

to October, 1871, at the North Manitou 

Island, near the lower end of Lake 
Michigan. Having decided to return to Chi- 
cago, I arrived here with my family and house- 
hold goods on Friday, October 6th, and took 
up quarters temporarily at the residence of 
my uncle, Colonel Robert A. Kinzie, on 
Ontario Street, nearly opposite the Historical 
Society’s building, between Clark and Dear- 
born streets. All of our furniture and effects 
were placed in a storage warehouse, corner of ° 
Cass and Michigan streets, I having refused 
an offer to store them on the West Side 
because the building was of wood, and I was 
afraid they might be burned before we got 
settled in a house of our own. 

On Sunday evening I had been on the South 
Side visiting my brother, and was returning 
home between eight and nine o’clock, when 
the fire-alarm was sounded. After I had 
reached home and saw how rapidly the fire 

1Arthur M. Kinzie was a grandson of John Kinzie, 
the first permanent white settler of Chicago. 

III 


Keminiseences of Chicago 


was increasing, I left the house and went 
toward the fire. I sat at the south entrance 
of the La Salle Street tunnel for some time, 
until the buildings southwest of the Court- 
house Square took fire, and then started home, 
convinced that the fire would sweep all the 
way to the Illinois Central Depot, but not for 
an instant believing it would cross the river. 
I remember thinking how scared a woman 
must be who, at the north entrance of the 
tunnel, asked me if I thought the fire would 
reach there. 

On arriving at Colonel Kinzie’s, I found 
that he had just returned, having been over to 
his office at the United States Army head- 
quarters to secure some valuable vouchers, 
which he barely succeeded in accomplishing, 
and that our wives had gone to look at the 
fire. I retired to my room, and sat reading 
for some time, when, on looking out of the 
window toward the south, I saw that the fire 
was on the North Side. My wife had not 
returned, so I aroused my two children, and 
commenced to dress them. At this time the 
policemen on duty were going from house to 
house rapping on the doors and telling the 
the people not to go to bed, but to be ready to 
move on short notice. In a short time my 
wife and aunt returned, and stated that they 
had been trying to stamp out the fire in the 
leaves around Magie’s place. 

At this juncture, Mrs. Captain Johnson 

112 


Arthur HA. Linzie 


came running in, wild with excitement, and 
asking us all if our clothes were insured, 
rushed away again. Just then a boy pounded 
on the door, rang the bell furiously, and 
shouted, ‘‘ Mr. Kinzie your house is on fire!’’ 
Hastily running upstairs to the back of the 
house, I found it to be a fact, and seizing a 
blanket from the bed, I took one of the 
children, my wife taking the other, and we left 
the house — to go, we knew not where. Turn- 
ing north on Dearborn Avenue, we walked 
slowly along, scarcely realizing that we were 
not to return shortly, as if nothing had hap- 
pened of a serious nature. 

When we arrived opposite Mr. Mahlon D. 
Odgen’s house, my wife suggested going in 
there until the fire was over; but as I could not 
see how that was any safer place than where 
we had left, I decided to move on. A short 
distance farther on my wife declared she must 
stop and rest and get a drink of water, so we 
went into Obadiah Jackson’s house, which we 
were passing at that time. Mr. Jackson was 
very kind, but there was no water to be 
obtained, the Water Works having ceased 
operating. She had, however, some very nice 
bottled ale which she gave us; and as we were 
enjoying that and resting, the gas suddenly 
went out and we were left in darkness. Mr. 
Jackson’s carriage was at the door, and Mrs. 
Jackson was busy packing the silver, and such 
articles as they could carry with them, intend- 

113 


Fieminigcences of Chicago 


ing to depart as soon as the near approach of 
the fire forced them to do so. 

After resting a while longer, we started on 
again. Every block or two we would sit 
down on the edge of the sidewalk, and rest 
until the fire made us move onward. Very 
little was said by anyone; there was no loud 
talking or shouting, though the streets were 
crowed with people and vehicles of every 
description, loaded with every conceivable kind 
of luggage. I saw one man carrying the rub- 
ber tube and broken standard of a drop-light; 
another was trundling a wheelbarrow on which 
was a cook stove, while on his back was a 
huge feather bed. One woman had a live hen 
in her arms, several had cats, and numbers had 
canary birds in cages. We met Dr. Tolman 
Wheeler pulling a trunk along the sidewalk by 
one of the straps; and as he was going di- 
rectly toward the fire instead of away from it, 
I turned him around and started him in the 
right direction. 

Just after daylight, we reached the corner 
of Clark Street and North Avenue. At that 
place we found Hon. John Wentworth, accom- 
panied by a boy carrying his black leather bag, 
whom he informed us was a bell-boy from the 
Tremont House that he had impressed into his 
services when he left the hotel. We consulted 
as to the best route to take. He advocated 
going west across the river, as by so doing we 
would get out of the track of the flames and 


114 


Arthur HH. Linsie 


eventually arrive at a place of safety. My 
idea was to push on to Lake View, where we 
had friends, and trust to the fire burning itself 
out before it got that far. And so we parted, 
each taking the route we had decided upon. 

At this time the whole appearance of things 
was most unnatural andsolemn. The crowded 
streets and sidewalks; the incongruous heaps 
of humanity; the dust and smoke driven by the 
fierce gale which, with increasing force, was 
sweeping from the southwest; the lurid glare 
from the flames; and the silence which every- 
one maintained as they trudged wearily along, 
not. knowing where they were going, nor where 
their enforced journey would end; together 
with the ever-falling sparks from the unrelent- 
ing and resistless wall of fire behind us, con- 
tinually impelling us forward, all tended to 
make the scene one never to be forgotten, but 
impossible to fully describe. 

A short time after leaving Mr. Wentworth 
and his bag-bearer, we took possession of an 
empty omnibus; and leaving my wife and 
children therein, I repaired to a livery stable 
near at hand, to see if I could make a bargain 
for some sort of a conveyance to move us 
more comfortably from the immediate vicinity 
of the fire. The proprietor did not give up 
the hope that somehow or other his property 
would be spared, so he would not let anything 
go out until he had to move altogether. ‘‘If 
I was a mind to wait,’’ he said, ‘‘ until the fire 

115 


Reminiscences of Chicago 


made him travel, he would give me a lift.’’ 
No offers of any price could move him from 
that decision. I heard afterward that he 
waited so long that he lost most of his stock. 

When I returned to the omnibus, I found 
Mr. Thomas L. Forrest talking to my wife, 
and he kindly invited us to his house, a square 
or two distant, to rest and have some break- 
fast. This we gladly consented to do. Mr. 
Forrest and myself went up on the roof of his 
home. The sight was truly awful! Towards 
the south nothing to be seen but what seemed 
a solid wave of smoke and fire rolling slowly 
towards us, the latter darting and leaping 
upward, it seemed, hundreds of feet. The 
wind was so strong that we could not stand on 
the roof without holding on to something. 
When we were moving along Wells Street I 
could see, as I looked back occasionally, the 
fire make a jump across the street from west 
to east and strike a building; the front would 
melt away, exactly as a sheet of paper laid on 
a bed of burning coals will smoulder awhile, 
then suddenly flash up and be gone. I also 
observed burning pieces of boards sailing 
along, high over our heads, that were certainly 
six feet long and as many inches wide. 

When it became evident later in the day 
that our kind host’s refuge would soon become 
untenantable, we resumed our enforced pil- 
grimage. Before we left there I was out on 
the street when I was accosted by Ira Bowen, 

116 


Arthur MM. Linzie 


seated in a one-horse wagon loaded with his 
Lares and Penates, who said, with the tears 
making light-colored streaks down his dusky 
cheeks, ‘‘Arth., have you seen my wife and 
baby? I’velost them!’’ I answered, ‘‘ No,’’ 
and inquired where he had lost them. He 
said that he had got into his store-wagon, put 
his wife and baby into his carriage, and told 
the driver to follow him, but, on looking 
around a short while before, they were no- 
where to be seen. He said, ‘‘My store is 
burned; my house is burned; everything is 
burned; but I won’t care for it all, if I can 
only find my wife and baby.’’ I asked him 
where he was intending to go when he started, 
and he said he thought of going to Mrs. 
Reynolds’. He said he had not been there 
yet, so I suggested that he do so; and he found 
them there. 

The rest of the trip to the city limits was 
much the same as the first part of the journey. 
We saw thousands encamped in Lincoln Park, 
each group surrounded by the few household 
effects they had been able to save and trans- 
port to that place. On arriving at the city 
limits, we found Colonel Robert Kinzie’s 
family comfortably settled at the hospitable 
mansion of Robert Clarke, who, with his 
family, were busily engaged cooking and dis- 
tributing food to the famishing refugees who 
crowded the grounds and adjacent street. 

After remaining a short time we accepted 


117 


Keminigeences of Chicago 


the invitation of John Hunter, the conductor 
of the Lake View dummy, to make his house at 
Graceland our home, and reached there about 
dark on Monday. The neighboring woods 
contained a goodly number of outcasts, and 
the street cars, which had been run up there 
for safety, made a comfortable shelter for many. 
A number of the inhabitants of that vicinity 
were at work with plows and spades, digging 
trenches and ditches to prevent the fire from 
passing through Wright’s Woods. 

During the evening the prairie to the west of 
us took fire, and we began to think that, after 
all, the lake would be the only sure refuge 
from the devouring element. ‘That fire, how- 
ever, shortly burned itself out, which relieved 
our minds very much. About midnight I 
heard some one call my name, and running 
out, I found, with what gratitude to God no 
one can tell, a carriage containing my brother 
George and my brother-in-law, who had started 
at noon, on Monday, from Indiana Avenue 
near Twelfth Street, and by driving around on 
the West Side, and thence to the North Side, 
had succeeded in getting in front of the fire 
and tracking us to that place. The carriage 
was loaded with provisions and jugs of water. 
I hastily gathered my family, and bidding 
adieu to our kind entertainers, we started for 
my wife’s sister’s, on the South Side. 

In passing through the vacant parts of the 
Northwest Side, we distributed our provisions 

118 


Arthur fA. Linszie 


and water to those we could find of the sick, 
who were encamped in large numbers in that 
vicinity. We saw in one place a very sick 
man. His wife was attending him, and had 
obtained an old piano packing-case, which she 
had placed on its side with the bottom toward 
the wind, and made a bed for her husband 
inside. A piece of candle fastened to a wire 
hung from the top, by the light of which she 
was reading to him. Her greatest trouble 
was want of water, and when we gave her a 
jugful her gratitude knew no bounds. 

It was a strange sight as we passed through 
the burned district that night. All the squares 
formerly built up solidly were now so many 
black excavations, while the streets had the 
appearance of raised turnpikes intersecting 
each other on a level prairie. All the coal- 
yards were still burning, and gave light enough 
to travel without difficulty. About daylight 
on Tuesday we reached our destination, truly 
thankful that we had escaped with our lives, 
and were provided with shelter and kind 
friends while so many were without either at 
that terrible time. 


119 


fAary L. fales 


[From a letter written by Mrs. David Fales to her 
mother, October I0, 1871, and now in the pos- 
session of The Chicago Historical Society.] 


OU have probably heard of our fire, and 
will be glad to know we are safe, after 
much tribulation. Sunday night a fire 

broke out on the West Side, about three miles 
southwest of us. The wind was very high, and 
David said it was a bad night for a fire. 
About two o’clock we were awakened by a very 
bright light, and a great noise of carts and 
wagons. Upon examination, David found that 
the fire was not at all on the North Side, but 
was burning so furiously on the South Side 
that the whole sky was bright. They thought 
it would stop when it came to the river, but it 
proved no obstacle, and the North Side was 
soon on fire, and Wells and La Salle streets 
were crowded with carts and people going north. 

We saw that with such a wind it would soon 
reach our neighborhood, and David told me to 
pack what I most valued. It seemed useless 
to pack in trunks, as every vehicle demanded 
an enormous price and was engaged. Several 
livery stables were already burned, and loose 
horses were plenty. One of the Wheeler boys 

120 


fAlarp DZ, Fales 


had a horse given him for nothing, except- 
ing a promise to lead it to a safe place. He 
took it home and tied it in their yard. Having 
no wagon, it was of no use to him, so David 
took it, and after a while succeeded in finding 
a no-top buggy; we felt very lucky, as nobody 
around could get either horse or conveyance. 
David packed it full, set me and himself on 
top, and started off to the Hutchinson’s. 

I cannot convey to you how the streets 
looked. Everybody was out of their houses, 
without exception, and the sidewalks were 
covered with furniture and bundles of every 
description. The middle of the street was 
a jam of carts, carriages, wheelbarrows, and 
every sort of vehicle— many horses being led 
along, all excited and prancing, some running 
away. I scarcely dared look right or left, as 
I kept my seat by holding tightly to the trunk. 
The horse would not be restrained, and I had 
to use all my powers to keep on. I was glad 
to go fast, for the fire behind us raged, and 
the whole earth, or all we saw of it, was a lurid 
yellowish red. 

David left me at Aunt Eng’s and went for 
another load of things. This he soon brought 
back, and he went off again, and I saw him no 
more for seven hours. People came crowd- 
ing to Aunt Eng’s, and the house was full of © 
strangers and their luggage. One young lady, 
who was to Have had a fine wedding to-morrow, 
came dragging along some of her wedding 

121 


Keminiscences of Chicago 


presents. One lady came with four servants, 
and one with six blankets of clothing. One 
lady came with nurse and baby, and, missing 
her little boy, went off to look for him; this 
was about daylight, and she did not come 
back at all. Now and then somebody’s hus- 
band would come back for a minute; but there 
was work for everybody, and they only stayed 
long enough to say how far the fire advanced, 
and assured us of safety. 

At twelve David came and said that he had 
taken everything out of our house, and buried 
the piano and books, together with the china, 
in Mr. Hubbard’s grounds. He saw persons 
taking off all the chairs, tables, and light fur- 
niture, without saying a word, for he knew 
they would burn, even in the street, and my 
nice preserves, which Maggie had set out on 
the piazza, he gave freely to anybody who 
cared to take them. 

The Hubbards thought they were safe in 
a brick house with so much ground around it; 
but wet their carpets and hung them over the 
wooden facings for additional safety. It was 
all to no purpose. David saw ours burn and 
fall; then theirs shared the same fate. The 
McCagg’s large house and stables burned in 
a few minutes, also the New England Church 
and Mr. Collyer’s. Inthe afternoon the wind 
blew more furiously, the dust was blinding, the 
sky gray and leaden, and the atmosphere dense 
with smoke. We watched the swarms of 

122 


fAarp LU, fales 


wagons and people pass. All the men, and 
many of the women, were dragging trunks by 
cords tied in the handles; the children were 
carrying and pulling big bundles. 

Soon they saw Aunt Eng’s house must go too. 
Then such confusion as there was! Everybody 
trying to get acart, and not one to be had at any 
price. After a while, two of the gentlemen 
who had wagons carried their wives farther 
north, and those that were left watched for 
empty wagons, but nobody spoke a word. 
Mr. Hutchinson, David, and some others, were 
taking things out and burying them, and many 
of the ladies fairly lost their wits. Poor Aunt 
Eng even talked of sending home a shawl that 
somebody left there long ago. David started 
for acart. Again he was successful, and got 
an old sand cart, with no springs, one board 
out of the bottom, with a horse that had not 
been out of harness for twenty-four hours. 
He put in all our things, and one trunk of 
Aunt Eng’s, to which Miss M. added a band- 
box. 

The West Side was safe; but to get there 
was the question. The bridges were blocked 
and some burned, but the man who owned the 
cart thought we could get there. We thought 
of Judge Porter’s and Mr. Dupee’s, where we 
believed we would be welcome. Wherever 
Aunt Eng’s family went, they must walk, and 
our prospects seemed so fair that we took May 
with us. Our ride was an anxious one. The 

123 


fieminiscences of Chicago 


horse had been over-used, and when urged on 
would kick till the old cart bid fair to break 
in pieces; then he would go on, and finally, 
finding kicking no use, gave it up, much to my 
relief. Many times we were blocked, and it 
seemed as if the fire must reach the bridge 
before we did. But we were much too well 
off to complain. 

Some carts had broken down, horses had 
given out, and many people were walking and 
pulling big things, and seemed almost ex- 
hausted. Furniture and clothing lay all along 
the road. Mrs. Hamilton hailed us from a 
mean little hut, two miles from her house 
and ours, and asked us to take a bag of Mr. 
Hubbard’s silver. It must have been some 
servant’s house. Anyway, it burnt soon after, 
and we still have the silver. The fences were 
broken in all the unbuilt fields; and furni- 
ture and people covered every yard of space. 
After a ride of two hours and a half we 
reached Judge Porter’s at dusk, and found a 
warm welcome. 

Every family I know on the North Side is 
burned out. I can’t enumerate them. It 
would be useless. It is sufficient to say every 
individual one. We were the only ones who 
took our things from Aunt Eng’s. The lady 
with the six bundles left five behind her; the 
lady with the four servants left a bundle of 
French dresses to burn, but, worst of all, the 
baby and nurse. They went with the Hutch- 

124 


flarp LZ, Fales 


insons. At the last minute, a Miss M. insisted 
on David taking charge of her watch; she said 
she could trust it to no one else, and it did not 
occur to her to keep it herself. All of our 
clothing is saved, and much we have with us. 

I never felt so grateful in my life as to hear 
the rain pour down at three o’clock this morn- 
ing. That stopped the fire. 

The gentlemen have come in, and David 
Says the piano burned under the ground; 
nothing was left but the iron plates. The 
North Side is level, as is the burned part of 
the South Side, so that the streets are not dis- 
tinguishable. They say people in every class 
of life are out of doors. The churches are full, 
and food is sent to them, but hardly anyone has 
any to spare. My watch was at the jeweler’s, 
and may have been in a safe, but the safes have 
not yet been uncovered. I shall write soon 
again; meanwhile, direct to 448 West Wash- 
ington Street. 


125 


William 4, Croffut: 


[From 7he Lakeside Monthly, January, 1872.] 


phetic flame shot into the clouds and 

leaned like a crimson Pisa to the northeast 
till the last building fell and the destroyer had 
crept sullenly away into coal-piles and garbage 
heaps there was a helpless acquiescence on the 
part of spectators that was pitiful. But when 
the raging fiend had died of plethora the old 
energy again came forth. Rigidity returned 
to the weakened spine, and vigor to the flaccid 
hand, and the eye of enterprise was lighted up 
once more with its undying flame. When the 
fire was baffled, citizens who had cowered and 
fled before it in awe arose bravely and said, 
‘¢ We can conquer everything else.”’ 

On every one of the hundred squares that 
had been laid in ashes on the South Side, men 
straightway attacked the smoking embers, 
extinguishing the lingering flames in order 
to build anew. Pieces of iron, writhing in a 
thousand fantastic forms, and scarcely reveal- 
ing under their strange disguises the original 
gas and water pipes, safes, scales, chandeliers, 


“ROM that windy night when the first pro- 


1 William A. Croffut was managing editor of The 
Chicago Evening Post at the time of the fire. 


126 


William A. Croftut 


stoves, mantels, and columns they had been 
were pulled out while still warm, and carried 
away for foundry purposes. Ashes and broken 
bricks were carted to the lake and dumped 
to make more land for an already opulent 
railroad corporation. Walls were pulled down, 
and an army of men were employed to com- 
pletely clear away the dédrzs, and clean and 
square with a trowel such bricks as could be 
made available for rebuilding. 

The first merchants who returned to the burnt 
district were, of course, the newsboys, peri- 
patetic of habit and insinuating of demeanor. 
After the newspaper nomads came an apple- 
woman on Tuesday morning, who, with an air 
of mingled audacity and timidity, stationed her 
handcart at the corner of State and Randolph 
streets, half a mile within the ashen circle. 
She was the pioneer of all the trade of the 
TOEUTEs. 1 

On Tuesday morning the last house burnt, 
away at the north. By Tuesday afternoon a 
load of new lumber had crept into the South 
Division. On Wednesday morning that lum- 
ber was thrown into the form of a box to 
cover a merchant’s wares. This was the 
inauguration of Slabtown. Thenceforward 
there were innumerable cartings; heaps of 
charred rubbish were briskly exchanged for 
heaps of fresh pine; carpenters multiplied like 
locusts; the air assumed a resinous odor, and 
the clatter of hammers echoed as if the ruins 

127 


Keminiscences of Chicago 


were being knocked down to relic hunters by 
an enraged auctioneer. 

By far the most grotesque phase of the 
calamity is the manner in which the vast 
business of the city, suddenly driven into the 
street, instantly accommodated itself to new 
locations and conditions. When the crimson 
canopy of Monday night merged into the dawn 
of Tuesday morning, it was found that, besides 
personal property, some thousands of loads of 
merchandise had been saved—stowed away in 
tunnels, buried in back alleys, piled up all along 
the lake shore, strewn in front yards through 
the avenues, run out of the city in box cars, 
and even, in some instances, freighted upon the 
decks of schooners off the harbor. And, far 
more than this, five thousand merchants had 
saved their good name—that imperishable 
entity, that ‘‘incorporeal hereditament ’’ which 
resists burglars and all the assaults of the 
elements, and carries an invisible treasury for 
him who wears its badge. Two hundred 
thousand people in the city, and ten times that 
number out of the city, were in immediate 
need of goods and compelled to buy. 

It was at this juncture that the terrible 
descent of the barbarians upon our aristocratic 
thoroughfares began. Down Wabash and 
Michigan avenues, hitherto sacred to the ‘‘ first 
families,’’ rushed the Visigoths in a wild, irre- 
sistible horde, with speculation in their eyes. 
West Washington Street—prim and stately 

128 


William A, Crof€ut 


West Washington— was the next victim; then 
followed West Lake, Randolph, Madison, Mon- 
roe. Block after block was swallowed up by 
the invaders. Trade walked into the houses 
with a yardstick for its stiletto, and domestic 
life took up its pack and retreated. 

Many a man who has done a business of half 
a million a year has invaded his own front 
parlor on the Avenue; has whisked the piano, 
the gorgeous sofas, the medallion carpet, and 
the clock of ormo/u into the capacious upper 
stories, and has sent his family to keep them 
company; while showcases have been arrayed 
through drawing and dining rooms, and clerks 
now serve customers with hats, furs, shoes, or 
jewelry, where they formerly spooned water 
ices at an evening party. 

The burnt district looks as if Cheyenne had 
waltzed across the alkaline prairies and best- 
ridden our poor disreputable river; but the 
city for a mile west and south of the fine dis- 
trict looks like Vanity Fair. The carelessness, 
even recklessness, with which Commerce has 
dropped down into dwelling-houses, haphazard, 
is grotesque and whimsical to the last degree. 
Three or four kinds of business, moreover, are 
crowded under every roof. A shoe store is in 
the basement, with long strings of gaiters and 
slippers hanging where the hat-rack was; a 
bench for customers improvised from an inver- 
ted box where the sideboard stood; fertile boxes 
of shoes are in the kitchen and coal-hole. And 

129 


Keminiscences of Chicago 


over the front, five yards of outstretched cot- 
ton cloth bears the simple legend, ‘‘Shoes.’’ 
Upstairs is a button factory, with pendulous 
and fascinating strings of buttons festooned 
across the aristocratic windows. The bed- 
rooms higher up are lawyers’, doctors’, and in- 
surers’ offices; and into the dormer windows 
of the roof shoot a large quiver full of tele- 
graphic wires. 

The next building is a stylish structure with 
a bow front; a bank president occupied it in 
September, and is perchance still in exile in 
some of the upper stories—but the bow win- 
dow in the parlor, scene of what countless sly 
flirtations and pleasant family szestas, is now 
garnished with ladies’ stockings hung up in 
graduated array; while a brown balmoral swing- _ 
ing, a silent sentinel, at the door, and the variety — 
of feminine toggery here and there displayed 
complete the story of Mammon’s invasion. 
Farther on is a pretty cream-colored cottage, 
the obvious creation of a pair who were at once 
lovers and artists. It is set a little distance 
from the walk; it has the angles and wings 
that are so charming and picturesque; a ve- 
randa runs cozily around it, and along and 
about it climbs a vine—a cool and delightful 
summer trellis. Here, too, the barbarians have 
effected an entrance and broken up the nest. 
Barrels of molasses and vinegar and flour lie 
impudently and lazily in the yard. A greasy- 
looking man goes into the door with a kero- 

130 


William A. Croftut 


sene can, and a boy sidles out giving his 
undivided attention to candy. In the bay- 
window is asymmetrical cob-house, constructed 
of bars of soap; and brooms, mops, and codfish 
are disclosed through the leafless trellis. 

A little farther down the block a bevy of 
schoolgirls issue chattering from a ladies’ 
fancy store; laces, collars, cuffs, velvet ribbon, 
and all the more delicate furniture of the 
female form are displayed in the window and 
revealed through the door ajar. A month ago 
this was a blacksmith shop, and the sparks flew 
in a fountain from the anvil, and the hammer 
clattered upon a horse’s shoe. Scrubbing- 
brush and whitewash-brush have completely 
disguised the parveni. 

Down State Street to Twentieth, and here 
is the largest dry goods store in the city or the 
West— Field, Leiter & Co.’s. Here are hun- 
dreds of clerks and thousands of patrons a 
day, busy along the spacious aisles and the 
vast vistas of ribbons and laces and cloaks 
and dress-goods. This tells no story of a fire. 
The ladies jostle each other as impatiently as 
of old, and the boys run merrily to the inces- 
sant cry of ‘‘Cash.’’ Yet, Madam, this 
immense bazaar was six weeks ago the horse- 
barn of the South Side Railroad! After the 
fire, the hay was pitched out, the oats and 
harness and equine gear were hustled into 
another building, both floors were varnished, 
and the beams were painted or whitewashed 

131 





Reminiscences of Chicago 


for their new service. Here where ready- 
made dresses hang then hung sets of double- 
harness; yonder where a richly-robed body 
leans languidly across the counter and fingers 
point laces, a manger stood and offered hos- 
pitality to a disconsolate horse. A strange 
metamorphosis!—yet it is but an extreme 
illustration of the sudden changes the city 
has undergone. 

All up and down Wabash and Michigan 
avenues on the South Side, and Monroe, 
Madison, Washington, Randolph, and Lake 
streets on the West Side, the fronts of the 
houses have been suddenly adapted to new 
uses; extensions have shot out from the base- 
ment to the sidewalk, resinous with the smell 
of new pine; and signs have appeared in all 
sorts of uncanny places—spiked to the hand- 
some front door that servants in livery used 
to swing open upon its bronze hinges, sticking 
awkwardly from the oriole window where cana- 
ries used to sing, and even sprouting strange 
arborescent growths from the bit of green- 
sward between the sidewalk and the street, 
multicolored, huge, and cruciform, on duty 
like so many bucolic warnings to ‘‘look out 
for the locomotive.’’ Ever since the fire, 
Chicago has been the Mecca of sign-painters; 
and every man commanding a brush and paint- 
pot was sure of constant employment at high 
wages, whether he could spell or not. Pine 
boards have become exhausted, and broad 

132 


William A, Croftut 


bands of white cotton have been introduced 
instead; and by such wrinkled insignia did 
some of the wealthiest of the National Banks 
first indicate their retreat. 

The churches that are spared have been 
curiously appropriated—several of them by 
the Relief Societies, others by institutions that 
are of the earth earthy. Here is one overrun 
and utterly deluged by Uncle Sam’s mail— 
given up in all its parts to the exigencies of 
the city postal service. One is divided up for 
offices—a lawyer offers to defend your title; 
an insurance man volunteers to save you from 
the next fire; and in the recess that used to 
hold the choir, a dentist holds the heads and 
examines the mouths of his victims. Another 
church is turned into a watch factory; and 
still another is possessed by an express com- 
pany, and over the official desks in the vestry- 
room vaults in a painted bow is the suggestive 
legend, ‘‘Come unto me, all ye that are heavy 
laden.’’ 

As already intimated, the work of rebuilding 
began the instant the fire withdrew. Indeed, 
for weeks before the flames were extinguished, 
while fierce volcanoes smoked and glowed in 
every block, and the vast heaps of anthracite 
threw forth angry pink and purple tongues, 
like the geysers of the Yellowstone, thousands 
of men were finding the old dimensions of the 
cellars and building up the stone foundations 
anew. 


133 


Keminigscences of Chicago 


The burnt district in the South Division— 
the square mile bounded by the lake, river, 
and Harrison Street —is too valuable per front; 
foot to furnish hospitality to sheds, barracks, 
and wooden warehouses like those that have 
found room elsewhere among the ashes. The 
real estate market, as far as there is a market, 
shows no great diminution below the prices 
asked and paid before the fire, and taxes over 
all these hundred blocks are still so heavy as 
to render prompt rebuilding imperative. So 
it happens that at the date of writing more 
than half the cellars again present the form of 
rectangular excavations swept and garnished 
for the builder’s force. 

On each side of every square, eager teams 
drag up the inclines into the street great loads 
of brick, stone, iron, and ashes, and the foun- 
dation walls rise in their places again to the 
cheery cry of ‘‘Mort!’’ as, wooed by the 
strains of Amphion’s lute, rose the conscious 
walls of Thebes. 

In the cellars of warehouses, where great 
masses of iron were kept, in stove stores, scale 
stores, and wholesale stores of hoop-iron, men 
armed with drills, crowbars, huge sledge-ham- 
mers, and blasting powder are toiling to dis- 
engage the mass. Even the iron was as straw 
in the furnace-blast of that awful morning,— 
stoves, and sheet and pig iron all melted miser- 
ably and ran helplessly down, roaring with 
rage, to the ground, and there it cooled in all 


134 


William A. Croftut 


fantastic attitudes and shapes. Here is a hil- 
lock of solid iron, as large as an omnibus; there 
is a platform as large as Table Rock— it once 
was moulded into kitchen stoves; yonder are 
upright masses, some of them rearing like a 
centaur, and others writhing like the group of 
Laocoon; farther down the ruins is a building 
where the lower stratum of the flowing metal 
has cooled first, and subsequent cascades of 
iron have dashed over it and trickled through 
it like so much molasses; and beneath the 
drippings hang in iron crystal stalactites from 
an inch to six feet long, like the lime drippings 
of a cave! As these are the most marvelous 
of the relics, so they are the most difficult to 
dispose of, and the owners of the lots are now 
quarrying the ponderous masses with huge 
levers, blasting powder, and all the arts of 
engineering. 

The walls of more than three hundred of 
the better class of brick and stone buildings 
are already rising in the South Division—rising 
even in midwinter, when masons are driven 
to cover in every other city north of 35°. 
Who thinks of using a trowel all through the 
winter months in New York, Boston, St. Louis, 
or even Cincinnati? Yet three thousand ma- 
sons and bricklayers and mortar makers and 
carriers are regularly employed in Chicago all 
the week through as we write. Many builders 
have halted at the top of the cellar wall to wait 
for March, but hundreds of others are pushing 


135 


Kieminiscences of Chicago 


vigorously upwards in spite of every obstacle 
presented byanextremeclimate. It is Decem- 
ber, but an artificial summer is created to keep 
the work from freezing up; a bonfire is blazing 
before the mortar bed, where the compound is 
prepared as the housewife prepares her dough; 
and other and smaller fires blaze briskly all 
around within the rising wall—a fire on every 
mortar-board, which keeps the mortar plastic 
and the blood of the bricklayer uncongealed. 
Thus is the smitten city rising again at New 
Year’s—rising, as she fell, by fire. 

The number of brick and stone buildings in 
process of erection on the first day of Decem- 
ber, on each street in the South Division, was 
as follows: 


River Street 8 Polk Street I 
South Water Street 12 Michigan Avenue 3 
Lake Street 10 Wabash Avenue 17 
Randolph Street 6. State Street 24 
Washington Street 6 Dearborn Street 6 
Madison Street 29 Clark Street 16 
Monroe Street 26 La Salle Street 4 
Adams Street 2 Fifth Avenue 6 


Quincy Street I Franklin Street 7g 
Jackson Street I Market Street 3 
Van Buren Street I Miscellaneous 21 
Harrison Street 2 Total “212 


It is probable that a thousand stone and 
brick buildings will be in process of erection 
by May. 

136 


William A. Croftut 


After the fire the Board of Public Works 
issued one-year permits for wooden buildings, 
which virtually abrogated the ordinance for- 
bidding them within prescribed limits. In four 
weeks thereafter the North Side was covered 
with wooden buildings so thickly that it was 
difficult to see across the blocks, and a row of 
similar structures in the South Division soon 
stretched along the hitherto unoccupied Park, 
on the east side of Michigan Avenue, a mile 
and a half, from the river’s mouth to Twelfth 
Street. Two stories only were allowed, but 
some became very capacious warehouses, 
adapted to the largest demands of a wholesale 
traffic. 

The gravest peril of the city now lies in the 
prolonged existence and ceaseless multiplica- 
tion of these combustible piles of lumber. 
Fire limits were prescribed by a timid Common 
Council in the hour of its dissolution, but the 
ordinance is openly violated in every part of the 
city with perfect impunity. The first man has 
yet to be arrested or annoyed for furnishing 
food for the next great conflagration. It would 
seem that Chicago could scarcely afford an 
encore of the performance of October 8 and 9; 
but a repetition of that tragedy is just as cer- 
tain to follow the persistence in our clapboard 
and shingle madness as is any given effect to 
succeed an adequate cause. 

There is scarcely any city on the continent 
so exposed to prolonged and terrible winds as 


137 


Reminiscences of Chicago 


Chicago. Our constant imminent menace is 
that autumnal southwest hurricane which 
sweeps up from the wide prairie to the lake, 
eager to seize upon a spark and nurse it into 
a conflagration. Let a block get well on fire 
towards the Stock Yards in some densely 
settled locality, in the face of such a gale, and 
all the apparatus of the fire department must 
prove futile. Nothing but acres of solid brick, 
or stone buildings that are virtually fireproof 
can stop it. 


138 


CHICAGO DIRECTORY FOR 
OCTOBER 10, 1871 


[From Zhe Chicago Evening Journal, Tuesday, 
October 10, 1871.] 


The following is a directory as far as we are 
able to make it out at this writing: 


Chicago Evening Journal, 15 and 17 South Canal 
Street. 

Board of Trade, 51 and 53 South Canal Street. 

Post-office, Burlington Hall, corner Sixteenth 
Street. ; 

Western Union Telegraph Company, Burlington 
Hall, corner of State and Sixteenth streets. 

Common Council, new Congregational Church, 
corner of West Washington and Ann streets. 

Board of Public Works, Masonic Building, corner 
West Randolph and Halsted streets. 

The officers of the Illinois Central, and Chicago, 
Burlington and Quincy Railroads will be found at 
the ruins of their old depots. Their vaults are in 
great danger. 

The U. S. Custom-house, U. S. Depository, 
Marshal’s office, U. S. Courts, U. S. Commissioner 
Hoyne, will be located in the old Congregational 
Church, corner of Green and Washington. 

The office for arrival and departure of vessels, at 
Light-house. 

The 7rizbune office is in the same building as the 
Journal, 

United States Pension office, rear of a drug store, 
corner of State and Sixteenth streets. The address 
of the agent, D. Blakely, is Michigan Avenue, 581. 

Merchants’ Saving Loan & Trust Company can be 
found at the residence of the President, Mr. S. A. 
Smith, 414 Wabash Avenue. 


139 


Kieminiscences of Chicago 


The proprietors of the Sherman House have 
bought P. W. Gates’ Hotel, corner of Clinton and 
Madison streets, and will open immediately. 

The Matteson House proprietors can be found at 
579 West Washington Street, where all business will 
be transacted. 

The Tremont House proprietors have purchased 
the Michigan Avenue Hotel, where they are now 
stationed. 


140 





— 


me Al 


y 
ry, 




















rc 

b= | 

———— 
—-r 
iS—oO 
.—— 


=e 
— 
LZ) baal 
ee 





